


Songs Across the Ocean

by Mhalachai



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-15
Updated: 2006-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:35:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2305004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abandoning England after the War, Harry Potter left his old life behind to take a new name, and become John Sheppard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Songs Across the Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Written after HP6 (Half-Blood Prince) but before HP7.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even though he's still walking around, Harry Potter didn't really survive the war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 uses some dialogue from SGA's pilot Rising. For the purposes of the exercise, imagine that Harry was born in 1971, instead of the HP Lexicon's 1980.

* * *

Harry Potter had two iron-clad rules in his mished-mashed life. The main rule was 'Don't leave anybody behind', and it got him through years at war with the Death Eaters.

The newer rule was 'Don't let anyone know about magic'. He'd lived by that rule for years, even since he'd bolted from England under the cover of darkness. At seventeen, he had finally killed Voldemort, but nothing could have prepared him for the magical civil war that erupted after that last battle. His friends who had survived the final Voldemort years had been cut down in the subsequent fight, until only Harry Potter and a handful of others were left.

Harry had held on for a couple of years, right up until the day he sat in St. Mungo's, holding Hermione's hand as she slowly died in screaming agony from a curse. She was the last thing holding him to the Wizarding World.

Afterwards, Tonks had found him standing on the train tracks, only a few minutes before the 5:17 to Paddington was due to trumble past and turn him into paste. She hauled him bodily off the rails, Apparated with him to a safe house in Dublin, and lit into him.

Hours later, they were both screamed out, aching and empty inside. No amount of cheap whisky had been able to warm them, although in the depths of his grief-induced drunk, something occurred to Harry, something that stayed with him through the next day's hangover and depression.

He was done.

There was nowhere on Earth he could go as Harry Potter. His face, glasses and scar and all, was even more famous now that he had defeated Voldemort and survived this far in the magical civil war that had engulfed the British Isles and half of Western Europe. Anywhere he went, the Wizarding World would find him.

That was fine. No amount of happy wand magic would undo what Harry had seen of magical killing and pain. He wasn't just leaving the country. He was leaving that whole world behind.

Apart than Tonks, only Kingsley Shacklebolt knew what he was planning. Harry still had his muggle birth certificate, the one his Aunt Petunia had been forced to acquire for him after his parents died. The plan had no small amount of Dark magic, but after so many years, Dark and Light magic all blended together in Harry's head. Light magic could kill just as easily as Dark. It didn't really matter.

They changed the name on Harry's muggle records, doctored him up a passport to indicate he was an American citizen. Tonks ran a quick spell on him that changed his accent and fixed his vision, one usually performed on small children that no one thought to run on Harry when he arrived at Hogwarts. Shacklebolt cast the most dangerous spell, the one that moved the scar on Harry's forehead up into his hair and out of sight.

He was still Harry Potter, but without the scar and the glasses, no one really paid attention to him. His dark hair was still an utter, untamable mess; his eyes were green with hints of grey as he aged, and not a soul would recognize him.

He emptied his Gringott's account and converted it all into muggle money, shook Shacklebolt's hand, and gave Tonks a hug and his wand. He was through with that magic. All it ever brought him was pain and loss.

An hour later, Harry boarded a plane to Washington, D.C. He never looked back. He had no reason to return.

* * *

Harry waited until he was in Maryland to perform the last spell. He read the newspapers in the local library, found the name of a boy who had just won a scholarship to an engineering college, and set about finding him.

The last piece of wandless magic he was ever going to perform was Dark and horrible and almost caused Harry to turn around and go back to that train yard in London. Still, his steps didn't falter as he followed the boy down an alley, his voice didn't waver as he called out the boy's name.

The imprinting didn't take long, and the boy didn't remember a thing. The boy even let Harry walk him to a near-by coffee shop, left at the counter to recover from his "fainting spell".

Later, Harry walked down the street, muggle knowledge dashing through his brain. He knew all the boy had known, understood math and engineering and physics and guitar and cars and video games.

He made it back to his hotel before he threw up. This was why he had fought against Dark magic for so long, this _taking_ without consent. Dumbledore would have been ashamed of him, Harry thought bitterly as he dry-heaved into the toilet, wishing he could Oblivate himself into forgetting who he was and all that he had done.

He never touched magic again. He took a bus to Portland, found a continuing education college, took the muggle college tests and passed. Armed with those scores, he found himself sitting on a bench on the boardwalk outside an office with a large American flag in the window, staring out at the water. There was no war here, at least not the kind that snuck up on you in the dark and killed your whole family in a flash of green light.

He had no idea how long he sat there before someone cleared his throat nearby. Years of reflexes twisted Harry up and to his feet, reaching for the wand under his sleeve, only he was in a t-shirt and his wand was halfway around the world.

"Are you all right, son?" the man asked, concerned. He wore a crisp uniform, one that looked vaguely like something in one of the old army movies Dudley used to watch.

"Yeah," Harry said, letting out his breath. His American accent sounded strange to him, even after a few days of hearing the words slide out of his mouth. "Is there something I can do for you?"

The man pointed to the papers in his hand. "Maybe there's something I can do for you."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "I'm not sure what you mean..." He spied the man's nametag. "Sergeant Tellman."

"Mind if I sit?" the sergeant asked.

Yes, he minded, but it wasn't his bench and he'd been loitering for a while now. He shrugged and sank down. The sergeant sat, his back straight, exuding confidence from every pore. _I wonder if he's ever seen a whole class of eleven-year-olds ripped to pieces in front of him._

"Have you ever considered a career in the Armed Forces?" the sergeant asked.

Belatedly, Harry realized that he should have realized where he was. "Not really."

His dead tone didn't put the man off. "Is there a career you have planned?"

Career. Hell, he hadn't expected to live past seventeen. It helped him in battle; if he didn't expect to survive, he didn't have to make choices he had to live with. "No career, no. Sir," Harry added as an afterthought. A lifetime of manners were hard to dig out from under his skin.

"What about things you like to do?"

Harry looked out at the waves, at the seagulls almost hanging in midair, at the children's kites off the beach. It reminded him of a simpler time, when the most he had to worry about was Malfoy's Quidditch pranks. "I like to fly," he said absently.

The sergeant followed his gaze out to the birds. "If you go into the Air Force, you can fly."

"Just like that?" Harry demanded.

"After you get a degree," the sergeant amended. "Are those your SAT results?"

Harry handed them over. The numbers didn't mean anything to him, but they caused the sergeant to let out a low whistle. "You can get into any college in the country with these."

Harry shrugged.

The sergeant handed back the papers. "Can I give you some information on the Air Force? You can take it home, read it over--"

"What's the hardest part of being in the military?" Harry interrupted. "Not the good stuff and the stuff on the brochures. What is the most difficult thing you have to do?"

The sergeant met Harry's gaze. "Accepting the chain of command," he said after a minute. "Understanding that you have to obey the orders that come from your superiors, for the greater good."

Harry stared for a long minute. For so long, he'd been the one giving the orders, to a rag-tag bunch of witches and wizards trying to save a world that didn't want saving. Maybe it would be easier, being told what to do, to let someone else take the responsibility for his life.

"Give me the papers."

The sergeant led Harry into the office and indicated for him to have a seat. "First things first," the man said. "Can I have your name?"

Harry thought of the name on his magically altered passport, and prepared himself to lie for the rest of his life. "John Sheppard."

* * *

No matter how far away he got, things still reminded him of his former life.

The first time he rode on a roller coaster, it took his breath away and terrified him and made him fall in love with gravity. It was just like being on his Firebolt, the one that Ron had been riding when Lucius Malfoy shot him down out of the sky.

The first time he played football with his Air Force academy buddies, his mind flashed with Quidditch plays and the Golden Snitch, and making out with Ginny Weasley in the stands and Cedric Diggory's cooling body lying in the muggle graveyard as Voldemort was reborn.

The knowledge he'd sucked out of that boy's head got him through the muggle classes, the math and physics and engineering, and it wasn't any harder than McGonagall's classes; almost easier, as there wasn't a war waging along outside the walls.

He found he liked learning things without the threat of death dogging his every step. His life almost felt good. He had friends of a sort, the respect of most of his classmates, and the girls in the local pubs seemed to like him, no matter how much he never saw their attention coming.

John Sheppard graduated his classes, kept up in the military training and kept moving forward, putting his old life away.

But his true love was flying.

Helicopters, fighter jets, cargo planes, he learned to fly them all. The faster it went, the more he loved it. Some days, he imagined if he could go fast enough, he'd break through and truly become at home in his new life.

He should have known the good things would never last.

He was on maneuvers in Germany when the orders came: Destination Afghanistan, after the attacks in America. There was so much going on, but he didn't have time to think about the ramifications, as he focused on obeying his orders.

War is war, and for all that the dusty streets of Kabul were a world away from the bricks of London, the tangy air of panic and desperation felt like coming home. He hated it, but he did what he had to do. Only a few of the men had been in war before, in Kuwait a decade before, and the rest... He fell asleep at night, wishing he had a wand, wishing he could end this, and being pathetically grateful that he'd never be able to hurt anyone with magic again.

People were hurt, people died. He flew mission after mission to save the fallen, the wounded. In every face, American or not, he saw the dead: Dumbledore, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Hagrid, Sirius, Remus... the list went on, flirting with his waking hours as he flew, in his nightmares as he slept. The dead and the wounded haunted him.

But he never left anybody behind.

That rule was what got him, in the end. He refused to listen to his superior officer, broke orders to try and retrieve a few wounded soldiers. He got his ass hauled up before a review board. The only thing that saved him a dishonorable discharge was that he'd saved those lives that night.

His superiors didn't want someone who disobeyed orders in a war zone, and they shipped him off to McMurdo in the Antarctic.

The quiet ice and snow was as different from Afghanistan as anything he could imagine. A few months of quiet and boredom, and his nightmares faded back to a manageable level. He flew the occasional chopper, learned all about maintenance, read books, talked with the research scientists who came through the city.

Finally, it felt as if he might be able to rest. He could see living the remainder of his life at the South Pole, where it was quiet and still and no one would be able to find him.

* * *

His VIP passenger, General O'Neill, was weird, but that was fine. The Antarctic did weird things to folks who were visiting. John had no problem filling the silence. It was someone new to talk to.

The radio crackled to life. "All inbound craft, we have a rogue drone that could seek a target on its own. Land immediately and shut down your engines. This is not a drill. I repeat--"

"It's too late. Hang on!" Major John Sheppard said quickly. The glowing thing in the sky that shot toward his helicopter like a bloody flaming Bludger, and he piloted the chopper into the Wronski Defensive Feint, ignoring gravity to coax unnatural twists out of the machine and pulling up at the very last second. It wasn't enough, and John had to land in a major hurry. Both he and O'Neill jumped clear, just as the missile skidded to a stop at the general's feet.

The remaining flight to the research base deep on the continent was silent. John kept glancing at the General, wondering what the bloody hell as going on. O'Neill wasn't going to tell him, however, and John gave up.

John would have been content to stay outside, checking over his helicopter, but O'Neill told him to come on down. "Down" apparently meant down a three-story ice shaft. John had no idea how muggles could have made such a tunnel. Apprehension was brewing in his stomach, but he tried to tell himself that was just the near-death experience.

"Hey," O'Neill called as he walked off. "Don't touch anything."

"Yes sir," John murmured. Not like he wanted to touch any of the crazy machines, or the ice walls. He'd been in the Antarctic for years and he never knew this place was here. He wandered for a bit, watching the scientists and the occasional bored Marine keeping watch. After a few minutes, a strange voice with an achingly familiar Scottish burr cut into John's attention.

"The second I shut my eyes, I could see. I felt power I've never had before. I had it dancing all across the sky. It was magical, it really was. They're lucky. I don't know where it came from. I just tried to concentrate and the drone shut itself down."

"So you're the one!" John exclaimed, stalking over to a strange chair on a raised platform. The Scottish man whirled around. "You're the one who fired that thing at me!"

The man took a step back. "Look, we're doing research, working with technology that's light years beyond us, and we make mistakes. I'm incredibly, incredibly sorry."

His sincerity was written across his features. John gave a mental shrug. "Well, next time just be a little more careful, okay?"

The man relaxed. "That's what I said."

John stared down at the weird chair between them. It looked as if it had been carved from bone and silver and sapphires. "What the hell was that thing, anyway?" he asked, eyes only for the chair.

"You mean the drone?" the man asked. John nodded. "The weapon the Ancients built to defend this outpost."

"The who?"

The man looked at him with growing incredulity. "You do have security clearance to be here?"

"Yeah, yeah," John said as he scanned the complex. "General O'Neill just gave it to me."

If anything, the man looked even more shocked. "Then you don't even know about the Stargate!"

"The what?"

The man, who introduced himself as Dr. Carson Beckett, stuttered out an explanation of a military program called the Stargate, and how there was a giant ring that transported people other planets, that had been built by a race of aliens called the Ancients.

Once John realized the man wasn't kidding, he opened his mouth to refute the existence of aliens. Those were only a science fiction myth, everyone knew that.

_Just like everyone knows there's not such thing as magic?_

"They think the gene was used as a sort of genetic key, if you will," Beckett continued. Intent in his lecture, he didn't notice as John poked at the mushy armrest. He expected it to feel cool, like everything else down this hole, but the gel felt warm and disturbingly alive under his finger. "So that only their kind could operate certain dangerous and powerful technologies,"

 _Weird._ "So some people have the same genes as these Ancients?" John asked as he circled the chair.

"The specific gene is very rare, but on the whole they look very much like we do. In fact they were first. We're the second evolution of this form, the Ancients having explored this galaxy for millions of years before..." His voice stuttered as John started to ease himself into the chair. "Major, please don't!"

"Come on," John said. "What are the odds of me having the same genes as these guys?"

As he spoke, the chair lit up like a lamp and tilted back, coming alive under him.

"Quite slim, actually," Beckett said in astonishment. "Doctor Weir!" he called down the hall, then to John he said, "Don't move!"

The doctor ran off, leaving John trapped in the lazy boy from hell that was sending energy through his body. It felt like a fucking magic wand, and it was all he could do to hold everything inside his head. He'd seen what the chair could do, and if even the slightest hint of his magic seeped out...

Beckett and a handful of others ran up to the chair, including General O'Neill. A dark-haired woman stopped the foot of the platform. "Who is this?" she demanded.

O'Neill jumped up on the platform and stared down at John. "I said don't touch anything."

"I just sat down," John stuttered. It was hard to speak through his concentration on keeping his mind totally blank.

A man in orange polar fleece came up to the chair. "Major, think about where we are in the solar system."

The simple suggestion was enough to break John's fraying concentration. A beautifully intricate star chart appeared out of nowhere, rotating gracefully. John knew he'd be able to spin it, zoom in, fall back, with a mere thought. It was easier than flying.

"Did I do that?"

He was so royally screwed.

* * *

Standing in the deep underground bunker, staring up at the Stargate, John told himself he should turn around and leave, tell the Air Force he'd forgotten to turn off the oven or something. His old life, with magic and all that, was one thing. Freaking aliens and inter-galactic portals were a whole new level of bizarre.

Unfortunately, he had sat on a grassy hill in Colorado Springs, flipping his last remaining Sickle for half an hour to decide on his course of action. It came up heads every time. He suspected the coin was loaded, but goblin-cast money never lied.

As the Stargate whooshed to life, the memory of the Ancient chair hummed in John's bones, like magic but deeper. John couldn't shake that feeling.

He had left his world before, but at least he had the safety valve of being able to go back. He could walk back into the wreckage of Diagon Alley, find a wand, and be Harry Potter again. If he walked through the Stargate, he was abandoning any hope at going back.

Hell. It was a decision he had made years ago.

He stepped up to the Gate. _Here goes._ He squeezed his eyes tight and stepped into the rippling field.

_Breathe._

The dark room on the other side was cold. Marines swept their lights around, shouting, but Sheppard had eyes only for the room. It felt almost dead, but not quite. Something was here, waiting.

Another step. The lights whooshed on, sending the Marines turning, looking for something to shoot at. John considered telling them it was okay, but Colonel Sumner might then decide to shoot _him_ and that didn't sound like a good idea.

The room was almost as large as the Great Hall at Hogwarts, ethereal and regal in a way the stone castle never was. He kept moving, watching as the room filled with wondering scientists. McKay came up to his side, and together they mounted the first step in the wide staircase.

The steps began to light up under his boots. The farther John walked, the more lights brightened under his feet.

The city was waking up for him.

Heart pounding, mouth dry, John swept his light around, looking for dangers. "The lights are coming on by themselves," he told McKay, half-wishing it was the case. There had to be something more than this, it couldn't be just _him_. He was done being the savior. He was just a guy now, one cog in the chain of command.

But the feel of the city, the yawning hum in his bones, made him clutch his P-90 a little tighter. Nothing could be as old as the city and not have a few tricks up her sleeve. Colonel Sumner was talking, but John only paid attention with half his mind. _All right, city,_ he thought grimly. _Next move is yours._

* * *

Of course, the next thing the city did was to try and drown them all. Not intentionally; she was old and out of power, but still. John would have loved to say "I told you so," but everyone was busy trying to avoid getting them killed and he kept his mouth shut. When Sumner wanted to go to a planet to look for an evac site, John hopped to it. He needed to get away from the city, to give them both some breathing room.

He didn't get his breathing room. After almost shooting a couple of kids, he and the team were bundled into a tent in an encampment, to meet the leader of the Athosians, the alien people they had stumbled across. Sumner was instantly dismissive of the tiny woman, Teyla Emmagen, but something about the way she looked at him held John's attention. There was much of Ginny Weasley's directness in her, but her eyes carried the weight of ages. John knew that look, he saw it in the mirror all the time.

His instincts told him they needed to stay in this camp, needed these people, so he overrode Sumner and introduced himself with that easy grin he'd taken to using. Teyla looked at him curiously. What had she seen in him that made her agree to let them stay? Maybe it was the agreement for a cup of the stout tea. If he had survived seven years of Hagrid's tea, he could survive any brew the Pegasus Galaxy threw at him.

* * *

_Should have stayed at McMurdo,_ John thought as he frantically ran after Teyla to the settlement. His team under fire by the Wraith and he was too far away to do any damned good.

Then Teyla vanished and the air itself moved, so much like Dementors that John wished he had his wand. The cold feeling of depression was absent, however. He wondered if this was the Pegasus Galaxy version of Dementors, _Dementors Lite_ , when Teyla stepped out of the shapes.

_Is she a witch? Is this all her doing?_

"They're not really there!"

John lowered his gun, staring at her in utter amazement. How did she know that?

"Do not trust your eyes," she urged. "The Wraith can make you see things that are not there. We must hurry!"

They ran.

* * *

Somehow, he got the remainder of his team and the Athosians back to Atlantis. The moment he stepped into the Gateroom, the floor shuddered, crying out in his head. The city had missed him, had been afraid he was going to leave her alone.

Weir was shouting at him, but he didn't have time. "What the hell is going on?" he asked the city. _I don't want to leave, but we're going to die!_

Even as John pulled Jinto up the stairs, hoping maybe they could dial another world and get the hell out of there before the water rushed in, the city's song changed from sorrowful to happy. Long-disused circuitry lit up, things moved deep below John's feet, and then everything shook as city began to rise through the water.

As the city burst through the water, the light seared itself into John's eyes, the light of another sun, the chance of another day. Looking out the window beside Dr. Weir and McKay, Jinto sliding in under his arm, John felt the city settle down smugly. She had proven her worth, and she had received a promise from him in return. _That's my girl._

* * *

_Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea._ In the belly of a Wraith space ship, missing half his team, surrounded by this unseen enemy, John began to wonder if Dr. Weir was right about the rescue mission being a bad decision. He made a note to get back to Atlantis in one piece to tell her that.

Or not. Screaming echoed through the alien halls, giving him a direction. What he saw when he got there made him go cold. Once again, he was too late.

John lay on his stomach in the alcove, staring down the barrel of his gun at what remained of Colonel Sumner as that _thing_ sucked him dry. The Colonel wasn't dead yet, and he saw John. Years fell away, and John was staring into Dumbledore's face, as Dumbledore stared at Snape on top of the Astronomy Tower, saying "Severus, please..."

After nineteen years, John finally understood what Snape had done, and why.

He pulled the trigger, killing Sumner as well as learning more about Snape than he ever wanted to know.

* * *

John got everyone else out, back to a happily humming Atlantis. They survived another day, and he had already fallen back to his old patterns of living one day at a time, one more life saved, one more enemy cut down. Weeks turned into months, and John found himself in charge of an organization at war. Again. The Wraith were his worst nightmare, a combination of Death Eaters and Dementors, no human compassion or sane way to fight them.

He didn't have magic anymore, but he had fifteen years of military experience, the best team of Marines a guy could hope for, and that stupid gut instinct that got him through every fight with the Death Eaters.

He also had Rodney McKay, who could find a brilliant solution to any problem while being the biggest jerk in two galaxies. Teyla Emmagen, also on his team, seemed to be able to find a needle in a planet of haystacks. Lt. Ford had an amazing knowledge of weapons and tactics, and an easy-going manner that could get them through almost any situation.

And under it all, John had Atlantis. He soon came to realize that he was the only one who heard her singing across the oceans, could feel the humming in his bones. At times he wondered if it was because of his magic, if she sensed that about him. Other times, he didn't think about it, let Rodney coax and cajole the city back to wakefulness with his gentle touch and careful plans.

On the quiet nights, he drifted off to sleep, knowing Atlantis was happy. The universe may be trying to kill them, but his city was glad he had crossed galaxies to come home to her.

* * *

The letter came on one of the Daedalus's supply runs. John was off-world at the time, and when they got back, he had to cart a rambling Rodney down to see Beckett. The plant that had looked a bit like poison ivy had induced cheerful delusions in Rodney, the only one of them foolish enough to touch the thing.

Beckett reluctantly took Rodney off John's hands, and John took the opportunity to go back to his quarters and test the Atlantis hot water supply, scrubbing at his skin for ages, just in case the crazy plant was contagious.

An hour later, he wandered up to Elizabeth's office to give her the low-down on the planet's potential use as an Alpha site. He found her lounging in her chair, head buried in a political magazine. John didn't recognize the magazine from her stock, which meant....

"Daedalus came?" he asked as he slumped on her desk.

"Yes," she said, putting her magazine down. Her eyes were dancing. "We have been re-supplied with all the essentials."

"Yes," John punched the air. "Coffee for the nerds, ammo for the cool kids, and TP for all."

Elizabeth couldn't hold back a smile. "You know, I never want to know what happened to the last batch."

"A wise idea," John said, poking at her silver watch. "They bring any new DVDs for movie night?"

"A few," she said. Her smile faded slightly.

He knew that look. "What?" he said warily.

"Nothing," she said. "The mail came."

He stared at her. "Which, correct me if I'm wrong, it usually does."

"True." She picked up an envelope from the side of her desk. "I didn't know when you'd be back from off world, so I had them leave this with me." She held the envelope out to him.

He didn't take it. "The Air Force usually sends my orders in another format."

"It's not from the Air Force," Elizabeth said.

He took the envelope from her fingers and turned it over. The hand writing wasn't familiar, but even after all these years, he couldn't miss that the name was written with a quill and ink.

The letter was addressed to John Sheppard, no rank mentioned, care of the U.S. Air Force. It took him a moment to make out the return address in the left corner.

_N. Tonks,  
Birmingham, England_

The pressure in his chest made it impossible to breathe. _No._

"Friend of yours?" Elizabeth asked, drawing John's attention back to Atlantis.

He blinked at her for a moment. "I'm going to go check on Rodney," he said, drifting to his feet. "The mission went well, tell you later."

She may have said something as he left, but it didn't register. Somehow, he made his way down the steps and along several corridors, the letter clenched in his hand. He didn't even know where he was going until a set of doors whooshed open.

_Figures I'd come to the training room._

John walked over to the seat by the window, his heart pounding in his chest. Unable to delay any longer, he slit open the envelope. The only thing inside was a small newspaper clipping. John pulled it out and held the envelope up, looking for a hidden message, but he couldn't see a thing. He turned to the clipping. It took him a long time to realize he was holding an obituary notice.

> _Dursley, Dudley. July, 1971 -- August, 2004._  
>  _Passed away after a short battle with heart disease, survived by his wife, Clara, children, William and Rose, and mother, Petunia. Predeceased by father Vernon._  
>  _Funeral to be held on August 25, 2005, in Little Whinging, Surrey._

That was it.

John let the paper flutter to the floor. Dudley had died the month after John had come to Atlantis, maybe even as John was being attacked by the Eratus bug. _Both our hearts stopped that month, only they got mine going again._

John hadn't known Uncle Vernon had died. He hadn't known Dudley was married, or had children. He hadn't seen any of them since the summer he turned seventeen.

Knowing Dudley was dead didn't mean anything to John. What did it matter for one more death? Everyone else was dead, too, people who had been more family than the Dursleys had ever been.

The door ghosted open. "Colonel Sheppard?"

"Teyla." He didn't look up.

"Are you unwell? Perhaps the plant--"

"It's not the plant." He sprang to his feet. "You want to spar?"

Teyla gave him a strange look. "Are you sure you do not wish to rest? You have had a long day, as have we all."

"I'm fine."

"I have left my sticks in my quarters--" Teyla began.

"So we'll have a bit of hand-to-hand," John interrupted, beckoning her. "Come on, it'll be fun."

Warily, Teyla slipped off her shoes and circled John on the mat. "We do not have much experience in this type of sparring," she said.

"All the better to practice," John said. Energy boiled up in him and he didn't want to figure out why, he only wanted to be rid of it. "In case we get into trouble on a stick-free world."

Teyla leapt at him. She was tiny and lithe, and probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. She hooked her foot under his ankle and tried to throw him, but in this fight, his weight helped him stay upright, and he grabbed her shirt to toss her across the room.

She was on her feet again in a moment, and it made John irrationally angry. How could she always get back up? What did she have that everyone else didn't have?

Teyla attacked again, dancing around him easily as he lunged at her, slipping under his arm and twisting his wrist painfully.

 _Ginny went down, a sword in her chest, and she never got up again._ John went to one knee and grabbed Teyla's belt to throw her across the room. _Greyback ate Luna and all we ever found was her wand and some blood-soaked hair._ Teyla held onto his arm, and when she hit the mat she pulled, dragging him along with the momentum until his shoulders hit the floor.

_They didn't get back up, why should I?_

John spun around on the floor and got to his feet. He had thought a fight might calm him down, but it was only making things worse and he didn't know how to stop.

Teyla watched him for a long minute, then threw a punch at his chest. John grabbed her hand _like grabbing the Golden Snitch_ and twisted her around, intent on putting her in a headlock. Too late, he realized where her feet were. A moment later, he was flying as Teyla threw him over her shoulder.

This time, he stayed down.

 _Everyone else stayed down, maybe I'm just too stupid to know when to quit._ The ceiling in the room was slightly blurry, and John wondered if the spell on his eyes was wearing off. _Uncle Vernon is dead. Dudley is dead. Aunt Petunia is all alone, just like Molly Weasley was in the end, just like me and Tonks._

Maybe Voldemort won after all.

Nausea churned in his gut. It couldn't be grief; he was done with mourning his past, and for all they hadn't died in the war, Dudley and Uncle Vernon were the past. They had never cared a whit for him, wouldn't have been mourning him if he had been the first to die.

Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Teyla settle beside him on the mat. She would never attack him with he was down like this. He trusted her more than he had ever trusted anyone. It hadn't been a conscious decision, but somewhere in the fight with the Wraith, she had slipped in under his radar.

"Does this have anything to do with Rodney?" she asked quietly.

He had to swallow a couple of times to speak past the lump in his throat. "No."

"I see." She moved away. When she came back, she was holding the small death notice in her hand.

"It's an obituary," John muttered.

"That word is not familiar to me," she said, staring intently at the paper.

John knew she probably couldn't read the words. None of the Athosians were particularly literate in their own language, but Teyla had been trying to learn written English. It was slow, going from a language with fourteen letters and only two verb tenses to something as messy as English, but she kept at it. It was a matter of pride.

"It's a... um, on Earth, when someone dies, a note gets put in the newspaper."

"And that's what this is?" Teyla asked. "For someone you knew?"

He could tell her. She'd never heard of Harry Potter or magic or any of it. She'd be safe to tell about Dudley at least, and she'd never break his confidence.

The words were forming on his tongue, when he realized he couldn't do it. He'd spent too many years trying to put this behind him to let it spill out now.

"It doesn't matter," he said, sitting up. "Hey, I heard the Daedalus came in. Want to go see if they brought any popcorn? We can get some for Rodney."

Teyla arched her eyebrow, giving him the 'I'm-not-buying-it' look, but said, "I am not sure Dr. Beckett will allow that."

"So we don't tell him," John said with a smile. He didn't know why he felt as if he'd been kicked in the gut. _Maybe it's because you're lying to Teyla,_ a traitorous voice whispered in his head.

Teyla waited until he had climbed to his feet to hand him the obituary. "You will want this."

Before he could think better of it, John grabbed the clipping and crumpled it up in his hand. "This-- It doesn't change anything," he muttered. He held out his spare hand to Teyla. "Let's go find Ronon and see Rodney."

* * *

John passed the popcorn bowl to Teyla. "This is... disturbing."

On John's other side, Elizabeth made a noise strangely like a snort. "What?" she said when John looked at her. "You have to admit this isn't something you see every day."

Ronon leaned against the glass in the observation room. "Think we can bring back some of this to use on McKay every day?"

"Ronon," Teyla said. "Drugging Dr. McKay is not a sustainable idea."

"But he's just acting so..." John took a handful of popcorn and gestured wildly. "Amiable."

Down below in the isolation room, Rodney was sitting on the edge of the bed, swinging his feet back and forth as Beckett prepared to draw some blood. "Now, Rodney, this will hurt a little," Beckett cautioned.

"That's okay," Rodney said cheerfully, a smile on his face as he thrust out his arm. "You're only trying to help me."

Looking rather gob-smacked, Beckett took Rodney's arm. "Aye, I am."

"And we're all just trying to help each other." Rodney looked up at his team in the glass observation bay, and waved with his free hand. "Hi guys!"

"Very disturbing." John handed the popcorn to Elizabeth, and reached over to the intercom. "How's it going, Rodney?"

"Great!" the scientist chirped. "Hey, want to play cards?"

"Cards can wait, Rodney," Beckett said. "Elizabeth, I think I need a sample of this plant."

Ronon laughed. "Told you so," he muttered.

Elizabeth took John's place at the intercom. "Right now?" she asked.

"As soon as possible," Beckett said. He withdrew the needle from Rodney's arm and folded some gauze against his skin. "Just to be on the safe side."

Elizabeth let go of the com button and looked at John. He sighed. "Sure, we can go," he said.

"All three of you?" Elizabeth asked. "Ronon is scheduled to start training the new batch of Marines."

John looked at Teyla. "The planet looked fine," John said. "We go in a cloaked Puddlejumper, and we can be back in half an hour."

"I agree," Teyla said.

"Sure," Ronon said with a shrug.

"All right." Elizabeth went back to the speaker. "We'll have your plant soon, Carson."

Rodney's face fell. "No cards?"

As much as John was tempted to laugh at the woebegone expression on Rodney's face, it would have been like kicking a little puppy. Beside him, Elisabeth gave a sigh of her own. "I'll play cards with you, Rodney," she said, cheering him immediately.

As they filed out of the room, John quietly called for Major Lorne to post a guard on the infirmary. "Just in case his symptoms change," he explained to Elizabeth.

"I don't think a card game will get that out of hand," Elizabeth said. "Be careful."

"Always am," John said. "Come on, Teyla, let's go find some plants."

* * *

As the rocky perch broke under his weight, John had a split second to think, _Oh fuck,_ as he pitched headfirst into the patch of plants.

"Colonel!" Teyla shouted, running over as he sat up.

"Well, isn't this just peachy." John spat out a mouthful of dirt and pulled himself up. Since it no longer mattered, he grabbed a handful of the plant and shoved it into his bag. "Let's get back to the Jumper before this stuff kicks in."

"It started working almost immediately on Dr. McKay," Teyla pointed out. "Will you be able to fly back to Atlantis?"

"Of course I will," John said. His annoyance at falling into the plants was beginning to fade. Hell, he felt great. "I can fly anything."

Careful not to touch him, Teyla pointed at the nearby ship. "We should hurry."

"Okay." They walked in silence up the hill, John happier with each step. This was just like a Cheering Charm! He hadn't felt this great in years. "Hey, Teyla, did I ever tell you that you're pretty neat?"

Teyla sighed. "No, you have not, Colonel Sheppard."

"I haven't?" he considered this for a few minutes as they got into the Jumper. He dropped the bag of plants on the floor, slid into the pilot's seat and tapped on the controls. "I should. Remind me of that."

"I will, when we get home," Teyla said. "Are you sure you are well enough? If we wait, then Dr. Weir will send a search party for us."

"Nah." With a thought, John cloaked the ship and took off. "I can fly anything." To illustrate his point, he set the controls to manual and zoomed through the trees.

"John!" Teyla shouted. "Now is not the time for this!"

"Why not?" John pulled the ship straight up and headed up to the atmosphere. Maybe, if he got enough speed, he could flip around and do the greatest Wronski Feint the Pegasus Galaxy had ever seen.

"Because Dr. McKay needs our help," Teyla said quickly. "We have to get back to Atlantis."

"Oh." John's good mood deflated somewhat. Teyla was right, he was doing something for Rodney. "Next time, then."

"Yes," she said, voice strangled. "Next time, we will practice flying."

Even so, John did some loopdy-loops on his way to the orbiting Stargate. Teyla punched in the address and sent her IDC on the final approach. "Puddlejumper One, you are cleared on approach," the technician's voice crackled over the radio.

"Copy, Atlantis," Teyla said. "Can you please contact Dr. Beckett and have him send a medical team to the Jumper bay? We had an... incident."

"Affirmative, Puddlejumper."

"You didn't have to tell them," John said. "I'm fine."

"All the same, Colonel, you would have done the same for any of us. You cannot fault me for following your example."

There was something logical in her words, but trying to think about it made John's mood waver. Then they were through the Stargate and the Jumper was docking and all John could do was sit back and wait.

"You're really pretty," he said after a minute of staring at Teyla.

She looked at him, a resigned expression on her face. "Colonel..."

"Like a sunset, you know?" he reached up to adjust his glasses, and was startled when his hand met thin air. "Like, it's not what you're doing or anything, you're just always pretty."

"Dr. Beckett's medical team will be here shortly."

"Don't you think you're pretty?" John pressed.

"I do not wish to talk about this," she said.

"Oh. Sorry." Something was starting to knock inside his head, like there was something he was missing. "Am I always like this?"

"No, you are not," Teyla assured him. "You are under the influence of those plants, do you remember?"

"Right." Something was wrong. His glasses were gone and he wasn't in his school robes. "Am I going to get points taken off for being out of uniform?"

Teyla frowned. "You are not out of uniform, Colonel." As she spoke, the back door of the Jumper opened and Beckett strode in. He and Teyla spoke for a minute, but John tuned them out. Something was wrong, very wrong, but he couldn't figure out what. Why couldn't he figure it out?

"Colonel Sheppard, you need to come with me," Beckett said.

"Why?" John asked, smoothing his hands over the ship's controls.

"Because I need to examine you, son."

Reluctantly, John stood up. "Am I in trouble?"

"Of course not," Beckett assured him. "You can come and see Rodney."

John kept getting distracted as they walked down the halls, but eventually, they made it to the infirmary. Rodney was lying face-down on a bed, snoring, and Elizabeth looked up from shuffling the cards as they walked in. "What happened?" she asked, sounding incredibly weary.

"The Colonel lost his footing and fell into the plants," Teyla said. "However, his reaction appears to be different than Dr. McKay's."

"How so?" Elizabeth asked.

Teyla hesitated before responding. "He is more paranoid, it seems."

"I'm not paranoid," John exclaimed. "Something is wrong, can't you see that?"

"Colonel--" Beckett started, but John slapped his hand away and started backing up.

"Why does everyone keep calling me that?" he demanded. A sudden, horrible idea occurred to him, and he reached for his wand, only to find it was gone. _Teyla must have disarmed me_. "I've been Imperioed, haven't I? That's what this is! You're trying to trick me!"

"Carson, what's going on?" Elizabeth asked.

"I don't know, Rodney didn't display any of these symptoms," Beckett said. "The Colonel--"

"Stop calling me that!" He pulled a cart between him and Beckett, and continued backing up until he hit a wall. "I have a name, why aren't you using my name?" He rooted around in his memory, but he couldn't remember who he was.

"You are Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard," Teyla said, slowly circling around. "Do you not remember?"

The name sounded like a familiar lie. "You're trying to trick me," he repeated, back away from Teyla. Too late, he realized he'd been backed into a corner. "You witches are making this all up, but it's not going to work, I'm not going to tell Voldemort anything!"

"Who is Voldemort?" Teyla asked, staying just out of arm's reach.

No, this was all wrong. Voldemort was dead, everyone was dead. Everybody but him. "Look, I tried," he pleaded. "I did the best I could and it wasn't enough, it's never enough."

He slid to the floor, resting his head against the wall. Everything was wrong and bad and he just felt so damned tired. _I tried._

The wall grew warm against this cheek as Atlantis heard his plea. She began to sing a song for his ears only, a low, sad lullaby so achingly familiar that it might have been something his mother sang to him, so many years ago.

When Beckett came with a sedative, he didn't put up a fight.

* * *

"Guh."

"I see you're awake," Rodney said from the next bed. "Moan quietly, I've got work to do."

John blinked, wondering what had crawled into his mouth and died. He groaned again and sat up, blearily looking around for water. "What happened?"

Rodney set down his laptop. "I had a charming afternoon eating popcorn and playing 'Go Fish' with the head of the Atlantis expedition," he snapped. "You and gravity had a meeting of the minds, dumping you face first into a plant that exudes a variant of LSD, and then you proceeded to have a breakdown in Carson's lab. Not to mention that you accused Teyla and Elizabeth of being witches."

John almost fell off his bed. "What? Are you saying I had a _bad trip_?"

"No, he's not," Beckett interrupted, wheeling over a small cart. "The plant exudes a chemical that produces a reaction similar to LSD in one way, but the chemical structure is vastly different."

"Oh god." John buried his face in the pillow. What a fucking disaster. He remembered everything he had said, about forgetting who he was... and he'd even accused them of having him under Dark magic!

"There, there," Beckett said in a way that wasn't comforting. "I'm still trying to figure out what generated your vastly different reactions to the plant. Colonel, have you ever taken any mind-altering substances?"

"I'm in the Air Force, remember?"

"Colonel."

"That was a no."

"How about you, Rodney?"

The astrophysicist suddenly became very interested in his laptop. "I haven't done anything that wasn't legal in Canada."

John looked up from his pillow, a smile threatening to break out. "Oh, really?" Rodney ignored him.

Shaking his head, Beckett left. John stared at Rodney until the man threw up his hands. "What?"

"Nothing illegal in Canada?" John said. "What exactly does that leave out?"

"I'm from Fort McMurray, Colonel, it's not exactly what you'd call the Sodom and Gomorrah of the North." He glared at John. "Besides, we have bigger problems."

"Like what?" John stretched out, feeling bruised and beaten, the way he always did after Teyla kicked his ass around the training room.

"Like Carson has the whole event on video tape."

John sat up. "You're fucking kidding me."

"Would I joke about something like this?"

"Yes."

Rodney closed his laptop. "Good point. But I'm not."

"Did you ask for the tape?" John demanded.

"Of course I did. He said it was something to do with scientific research."

John frowned, rubbing absently at the day's beard growth on his chin. He couldn't leave that tape in Beckett's hands, just in case someone along the way realized what he was talking about when he mentioned Voldemort. The last thing he needed was for the military to start wondering why one of its Air Force members had been blathering about magic. "I've got an idea," John said.

"Great."

* * *

The day after John and Rodney were released from the infirmary, John rounded up Ronon and Teyla for a little 'recon'.

"Let me see if I understand this," Teyla said after John finished outlining his plan. "We are to sneak into Dr. Beckett's office, steal the tape, and leave."

"Yeah, that's the plan."

"That's it?" Ronon asked.

John spread his hands wide. "What's wrong with that plan?"

"It's stupid," Rodney intoned.

"No, see, it's brilliant in its simplicity." John looked at his team. "What?"

Ronon uncrossed his arms. "Let's go."

Leading the way with Rodney, John hummed the Mission Impossible theme song under his breath as they snuck around the corner to Beckett's office. The door was open and the room was dark.

"Are you sure he's not in there?" Rodney asked.

"It's Lt. Cadman's lunch hour," John said. "Beckett'll be in the commissary." He darted across the hall and flattened himself against the wall. The rest of his team hung back, Teyla in particular looking at him as if he had lost his mind. "Come on!"

Only Rodney followed him into Beckett's office. The faint light from the hallway only provided the tiniest bit of illumination, leaving John to creep across the floor to the filing cabinets by sense of touch alone.

"What are we looking for?" Rodney whispered.

"A tape disc."

"And we'll know it's the right one how?"

"Because it'll be the ones with our names on it!"

Rodney muttered something into the darkness, then swore. "Sorry about your foot."

John froze. "What about my foot? I'm over here."

The lamp switched on, to reveal Beckett and Elizabeth watching them. Beckett in particular had a pained expression on his face.

 _Busted._ "Hi!" John said, smiling. "I see you caught Rodney and myself in our latest project."

"Colonel!" Rodney hissed.

"What project would that be?" Elizabeth inquired innocently.

"Besides stealing patient files," Beckett muttered.

John put an appropriately surprised expression on his face. "Dr. Beckett, I'm shocked that you would have such a low opinion of Atlantis's pre-eminent astrophysicist and its military commanding officer," he said. "We were merely using our down time to..." _Think, John, think!_ "To check security systems in the base."

"You canna expect us to believe that!" Beckett exclaimed.

Unexpectedly, Elizabeth cut in. "No, Carson, that's actually a wonderful idea."

"It is?" Rodney said.

Elizabeth nodded, and John's heart began to sink when he saw the gleam in her eyes. "In fact, Colonel, why don't you and Dr. McKay run a complete security check on all our systems during your recovery period? I'll expect the report on my desk by tomorrow afternoon." She turned to Beckett. "Why don't we head down to lunch, Carson?"

"You go, Elizabeth, I've got a lot of work to do." The doctor glared at John and Rodney until they left the office. Elizabeth gave them a charming smile, then vanished around the corner.

"Did we just get detention?" Rodney asked.

"I think so," John said slowly. "Well, that was a bad plan."

"I told you--"

John aimed a menacing finger at Rodney. "Do _not_ finish that sentence." He shook his head. "I really thought that would work."

Rodney snorted. "At least the acid plant trip didn't cure you of being annoyingly optimistic. Whatever gave you the idea that such a thing might work?"

"High school," John said. He stiffened when he heard the words come out of his mouth, but the familiar pain of remembering what he and Ron and Hermione had used to get up to at Hogwarts didn't hit him. Cautiously, he said, "We nicked a bunch of stuff from a teacher when we were twelve."

"Nicked? What are you, British all of a sudden? And for what?" Rodney asked.

"A chemistry experiment." _To disguise ourselves as other people, and it tasted horrible and Hermione turned into a cat and Snape was so convinced it was us but couldn't ever prove it and I haven't thought about that in years._

"Are you okay?" Rodney asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The look you get when the Wraith are coming, or when Chuck makes a joke and you can't understand his Canadian humor."

"That's because Chuck isn't funny."

Rodney waved his hand. "You can't blame him, he's from Winnipeg." He started off down the hall. "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I can feel the beginnings of hay fever coming on. I'm not going to work on that security review you got me sucked into until after we eat. Come."

John went.

* * *

Halfway through lunch, Teyla and Ronon joined John and McKay at their table. John paused in slurping his hot coffee to give them both the glare they deserved. "Fancy meeting you here." Rodney didn't stop shoveling his optimistically named Beef Stroganoff into his mouth.

Teyla leaned back in her chair and gave John a bland look. "You cannot have wished us all to be caught."

"That's not the point," John said, pointing his spoon at her. "The plan was to go in as a team, to strike and walk out with the target."

Ronon lazily pulled a small silver disc out of his sleeve. "You mean this?"

Rodney dropped his fork. "That's it!" he exclaimed, reaching over, but with long-disused Seeker skills, John quickly plucked the object from Ronon's fingers. "Hey!"

"How did you get this?" John demanded, sticking the disc in a pocket that Rodney wouldn't dare reach for. "Beckett was in his office."

"Dr. Beckett was good enough to step into the infirmary with me to review the vaccination schedule on the mainland," Teyla said with a smile. "Ronon took advantage of the distraction."

"Now that's a good plan," John said, grinning. "What would I do without you guys?"

"Get into even more trouble?" Ronon suggested. "You going to eat that?"

John slid his Jell-O cup across the table. "Thanks, guys."

"Do not mention it," Teyla said. "And next time Ronon and myself make a suggestion for a plan, you should hear us out."

"Cross my heart," John promised. "That means yes. Hey, I've got an idea!"

"Not again," Rodney muttered. "What gave you the idea that you were in charge?"

"I look better in a tiara than you do," John said. "Who wants to hear my idea?"

As his team studiously ignored him, John couldn't help feeling like he hadn't lost as much as he thought. He had survived the war with Voldemort, had made a new life for himself. Now, he had proven he could survive the Wraith, with the help of his team. _No,_ he realized. _My friends._

* * *

He had three rules that he lived by in Atlantis. He never leaves anybody behind, not a soldier or scientists under his protection. The people he lost hold a place in his memory, especially Lt. Ford. John told himself that one day, he'd find Aiden and drag him back to Atlantis, even if he had to turn over every rock in Pegasus to do so.

The newest rule was to trust his team. He'd proven that with Rodney and Teyla and Ronon, he could do anything. They bring such diverse skills to the table, but they were more than a team, more than friends. They were all the family any of them have left. Teyla had not said anything about the obituary, but John knew that if he ever needed to talk, she would listen to him, and not judge him for his actions.

The last rule, to never speak of magic, was easier on Atlantis than it was on Earth. Whatever it was that set Atlantis humming under his touch was so much like magic that John didn't miss anything he could do with a wand. Her songs were always in his head, as Rodney and Zelenka powered up more of her sections with the ZPM.

John wondered if Rodney ever noticed how the city responded to John's touch, but he hadn't said anything. Maybe one day, he would grab some of Zelenka's homebrew and tell Rodney everything. But for now, the city's songs were his secret.

He was very good at holding secrets, but it had taken him so many years to realize that he wasn't lying when he thought of himself as John Sheppard.

John Sheppard, Harry Potter: only names. It was what he did that mattered. At least he knew that when he died, Atlantis would go on singing her songs across the oceans.


	2. Ancient Blood (1/4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as he thinks he's settled into his new life at Atlantis, everything in John's life starts to fall apart again.

* * *

John ran towards the Stargate, arms burning from half-dragging, half-carrying Teyla. He didn't have time to stop to adjust her dead weight _not dead she's not dead yet I'm not going to let her die_ and Ronon had already dialed Atlantis and was waving Sheppard on, shouting something about the shield being down, but the words made no sense.

All that made sense were the images dancing before his eyes: Ronon, bloodied, holding out his hand; Rodney, panting and white-faced with exhaustion but running at John's side; the unnaturally pale tinge to Teyla's face under the blood running from her mouth and nose. In the very edges of John's vision, tiny shivers of grey curled, familiar and horrific. If he waited long enough, he'd be surrounded by the ghosts of the people he had let die. _Teyla's not dead yet I'm not going to let her die!_

Then they were up the Stargate steps, Ronon grabbing John's sleeve and hauling him through the event horizon. John fell across the galaxy before he materialized in Atlantis, still falling. He twisted under Teyla's weight to cushion her from the fall and hit the ground hard, air knocked from his chest.

His ears started working again just in time to hear the shouting in the control room.

Ronon hovered over them, gun in his hand, but it wasn't going to do any good. Rodney collapsed to his knees beside John, using gore-covered hands to help John sit up with Teyla in his lap. The trip through the wormhole had jolted her back to consciousness. She fought weakly to breathe through blood-filled lungs. The gaping hole in her side glistened with bits of red flesh and dull-white bone that should never be seen.

"Kkh... Colonel" she choked out. Rodney brushed the hair back from her face, holding her head with an unlikely tenderness.

"Shh," John said, cradling her gently. "I think you can call me John."

It was the stupidest thing he had ever said. She was going to die on the Gateroom floor because he'd led his team into a dangerous situation and she'd never be able to call him John, or Colonel, or Sheppard or any of it. But he couldn't find a way to ask her to not die.

Still, the corner of her mouth turned up for a moment. Then something happened, and she spasmed in his arms, coughing blood everywhere like she was drowning in it. Rodney kept shouting "No!" over and over, but it didn't make a lick of difference.

Teyla grabbed at John's vest with one last burst of energy, and John had a wild idea that maybe she'd be fine after all. Then she stopped fighting.

 _No no NO!_ John screamed in his head. He fell back, putting one hand under him to stop his descent as Teyla slid bonelessly down his lap. _This isn't going to happen, she's not dead! I can't lose anyone else!_

The floor under John's hand went from cool to searing hot in an instant, a white light blinding him. Atlantis screamed as John felt something ripped from his whole body.

Then the screaming stopped and the lights were gone and John collapsed, pinned by Teyla's weight.

But only for a moment. Teyla jackknifed up and off John's legs, rolling onto her stomach and coughing hard. John's vision swam with streamers of black, but he refused to pass out.

The wound in Teyla's side was gone.

"What is going on?" Elizabeth's voice cut into John's stupefied staring. She ran down to the bedraggled group by the Stargate, followed by Major Lorne and several bristling Marines.

"What--" Rodney grabbed Teyla's shoulders and hauled her up to face him. "How are you not dead?"

Teyla choked up a mouthful of blood. "I don't..." Shaking, she wiped blood from her face with her ruined sleeve. "What happened?"

"There was a light," Ronon said. He cradled his gun, scanning the room for threats.

Rodney snapped his fingers. "Of course!"

"Rodney," Elizabeth said warningly.

"No, it makes perfect sense, if you consider that the Goa'uld are technological scavengers."

John let his head fall to the ground. He knew that Rodney kept talking, but the city was whimpering at him and John didn't know why. It was important and he had to concentrate, to put everything else out of his head, including the heavy feel of Teyla's body in his arms, the smell of blood almost thick enough to chew, the raw feeling where something had been ripped out of him by Atlantis, the tiny tremors getting closer in the edge of his vision--

"John?"

John turned his head. Elizabeth had knelt beside him. In the meantime, Dr. Beckett had appeared and was examining _blood flowing out of her mouth and nose_ Teyla. "Elizabeth."

"Do you know what happened?"

Everyone was looking at him. He shouldn't be lying on the floor like this. He was the military commander of Atlantis, he had responsibilities, he couldn't let the near-fatal injury of one of his team members knock him off his game. He'd done it before: watched Bellatrix Lestrange slaughter Neville Longbottom, seen Ginny fall to the ground dead, ducked to the side as Percy Weasley took an Avada Kedavra meant for his mother, and none of that had slowed John in his pursuit of Voldemort.

"All right, enough of this," Beckett said, pushing Elizabeth away. "Colonel Sheppard, can you sit up?"

"Yeah," John said. He pushed himself into a sitting position, trying to ignore the ache in his chest. "That light thing... yeah." His eyes flickered to where Rodney was badgering Teyla into sitting on the stretcher, but something cracked in his head and he had to look away.

"It's obviously effected the Colonel and Teyla in different ways," Beckett said. "I'll need you all to come to the infirmary."

John wanted to stay in the Gateroom, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out what Atlantis was trying to tell him, but he couldn't figure out any way to say that without sounding crazy.

He managed to stand without help. Everyone was staring at him, tempting John to say something in Parseltounge, simply to justify those expressions on their faces.

Fuck. He had to focus and get back to himself, not let the shock of almost losing Teyla push him down into his memories of a childhood of pain and magic.

Not looking at anyone in particular, John followed Teyla's stretcher out of the Gateroom. Too-loud voices mingled in the air around him. Rodney and Elizabeth and Lorne all chattered, almost masking Teyla's wholehearted protestations at being forced to ride the stretcher. Even Ronon's silence seemed to drown out the city's hesitant song.

John desperately wanted everyone to shut up and leave him alone with his city.

* * *

"She's perfectly healthy," Beckett said an hour later.

"As I have been telling you," Teyla replied, rather snappishly. She sat curled up on the bed, her legs pulled tight to her chest. In the white hospital pajamas, she looked impossibly tiny and frail.

"But how is that possible?" Elizabeth asked. She looked around at gathered crowd. "Her injuries were real."

"Very real," Ronon said. He continued to reassemble a stripped Beretta on the bed next to Teyla's.

John slouched against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. If he stared directly at the floor, avoiding the area around Teyla, he could almost ignore the shivering images in the edges of his sight. _She's not fucking dead, she's not joining you goddamned ghosts, so go away!_

"But there's something else," Beckett continued, nodding at the nearby Dr. Biro.

Dr. Biro tapped on the computer. "We ran several x-rays to be sure. Teyla broke her leg badly when she was a child, leaving some scarring on the bone. We had film on that bone from our initial tests on her when she first joined the expedition." She pulled up an image of a bone on the computer screen. The line of the break was visible, even from where John stood. Dr. Biro hit another key, and another image appeared, one that was almost identical, but the break line was gone. "We ran this today."

"It makes perfect sense," Rodney said. "If my theory is correct, then--"

"What are you talking about?" Ronon asked, snapping the safety on the gun and stowing it somewhere in his jacket.

Rodney shook his head. "The Goa'uld back in the Milky Way galaxy have a device called a sarcophagus. It's a healing and regenerative device, that can cure any wound." As he spoke, he sketched the air with his hands. "But the Goa'uld are technological scavengers. They take whatever they find and incorporate it. The Goa'uld Telchak developed the sarcophagus technology thousands of years ago, based on Ancient healing technology. What we saw in the Gateroom might have similiar link to the technology used in that case."

"But the sarcophagus is a contained unit," Elizabeth argued. "What we saw today was a wild burst."

"No, it wasn't. I had Zelenka look at the sensor readings in the Gateroom. We thought it was a wide beam, but in actual fact it was directed at one person in the Gateroom who has a perfect track record of activating Ancient technology without any idea how it works."

John blinked hard and looked up at Rodney. "I didn't do this."

"Not intentionally," Rodney said.

"Hold it!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Why would the Ancients have something like this beam in the Gateroom?"

Rodney pursed his lips for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "In case something happened like it did today. An emergency that forced them back to Atlantis through the Stargate."

"What's important is that now that we know it's there, we might be able to use it again," Dr. Biro said. Her enthusiasm sawed at John's fraying temper. "If we can set up a test to duplicate the circumstances, then maybe Colonel Sheppard--"

John pushed himself off the wall and took two long steps across the floor to Dr. Biro. She quickly closed her mouth and seemed to have trouble meeting his eyes. "Here's what we'll do," John said with a detached calm. "You decide which of my team members to shoot a hole through, and I'll see if I can get the Gateroom beam thing to heal them before they bleed out all over the floor, how's that?"

"Colonel Sheppard!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "I'd like a word with you, outside!" Elizabeth waited until John stepped out of Dr. Biro's personal space before following him into the hallway. "What the hell was that, John?" she demanded.

John shook his head. "You heard what she was suggesting!"

"I heard what she said." Elizabeth crossed her arms over her chest. "And frankly, I don't care what she suggested. It's her role as physician to suggest things. That's what she does. What's bothering me is how you are reacting to this."

Staring at Elizabeth made John's head hurt. He turned around and put his hand against the wall to balance himself. Atlantis sighed and continued her sad humming, as John realized that he still had Teyla's blood on his hands.

"You've all had a bit of a shock," Elizabeth continued. "I'm taking your team off rotation for a few days--"

"Elizabeth!"

"Until we have a chance to make sure that what healed Teyla isn't going to cause her a relapse." John clutched the wall a little tighter. Elizabeth sounded closer and he wasn't sure he'd be able to stand someone touching him right then. "And I'd like you to go see Dr. Heightmeyer."

"For fuck's sake, Elizabeth, I wasn't the one who got a hole blown through my side!" John rotated enough to rest his shoulder against the wall. "I'm not going to see Heightmeyer!"

"John, this isn't like you," Elizabeth stressed. "Rodney told me what happened to Teyla on that planet. I know your entire team means a lot to you. Take a few days to deal with what almost happened."

 _You don't know a fucking thing._ "Do you want anything else?" John fought to keep his breathing even. Arguing with Elizabeth had taken his attention off the vital task of keeping the _things_ in the corners of his vision from overwhelming him. He knew from past experience, some of it in Atlantis, that he needed to be somewhere _else_ before he seriously lost it.

Elizabeth gave him a long look. "No."

John walked away without another word.

* * *

Before going to his room, he made a detour down to the labs. Zelenka's office was empty of people. _Probably all up in the Gateroom salivating over the sensor readings,_ John thought in disgust as he lifted various boxes to the ground. Under the cases was an old storage box that had initially held scanning equipment, and now hid the bottles of homebrew that the chemists distilled down the hall.

John discovered the still a year before, and hadn't said anything. He kept an eye on his Marines for any signs of drunkenness, on or off duty, but so far not a one had shown up for work intoxicated or even majorly hung-over. Now, John didn't hesitate as he lifted out one of the bottles and set everything back in place.

Luckily, the labs were near a transporter. John stepped inside the small room and pushed the screen to disgorge him near his room. The bright light that enveloped him was too much like the beam in the Gateroom that had kept Teyla alive, saving her when John could not.

He swayed a little as the door opened. His chest hurt and he felt like death, but at least Teyla was okay. The city could rip him into a million tiny pieces if that was what it took to save his team.

The hallway to his room seemed to go on forever. He could navigate the route in the dark, but today he made a few wrong turns. Atlantis had to give him a few reminders, light flashing farther down the hall, to get him back on course.

He stumbled into his room, refusing to look into the shadows. If anything lurked there, he would not acknowledge it.

Still, as he set the bottle on the desk, the darkness moved, tiny fingers of grey reaching out for him. They clung at him like cobwebs as he moved through the darkened room, stripping off his blood-caked clothes and dropping them to the ground. They followed him into the brightly lit bathroom, as he stepped naked into the shower. They swirled around his skin as he turned the water as hot as he could stand.

 _You saved Teyla but you didn't save us,_ the shadows whispered in John's head. He tried to ignore them as he concentrated on getting Teyla's blood out from under his fingernails. _You don't even have magic anymore and you saved her._

_Why her? Why not us?_

John gave up on his nails and used the wash cloth to scrub at his chest. Teyla had bled so much, the red had soaked through his vest, through his BDUs, and coated his chest, his stomach, his thighs, his--

He dropped the washcloth and threw up.

 _You didn't act this way when you gave up on me,_ said one whisper that sounded suspiciously like Ford. _You didn't give a fucking damn when I ran away._

"Shut up," John choked out, turning the water stream to ice cold. He let the water wash away all evidence of his lunch, then scrubbed roughly at his skin with bare hands.

_You don't seem to have a problem letting girls die, so why worry about one more?_

Images of all the girls and women John had seen die crowded into his head: Ginny, Luna, Fleur Delacour, Lavender Brown, the Patil twins, McGonagall, Sprout, Madame Pomfrey, the little toddler girl in Hogsmeade that Greyback had set on fire, Hermione... But now Teyla joined them in John's mind-eye, her body limp and lifeless on the Gaterium floor.

John put his head under the icy spray and prayed that everyone would just go away and leave him alone. He couldn't change the past. He couldn't save anybody.

Somehow, he dragged himself out of the shower before hypothermia set in. The cold usually drove the ghosts away, but not today. Today, they lurked in the darkness of his room, waiting for him to go to sleep, so they could dig in for the long haul.

He stumbled over to the sink and brushed his teeth a few times, until the sour taste of vomit in the back of his throat was replaced with the chalky mint aftertaste of military-issue toothpaste. He refused to look at his reflection, didn't want to see his dead father's face staring back at him.

It hadn't been this bad since after they got back from the Hive ship. Losing Ford again, watching Teyla and Ronon go crazy on the Wraith enzyme, knowing McKay was going to die, knowing everyone on Atlantis would die... None of it happened, but for weeks he'd had nightmares of losing everybody again, of trying his hardest to save them all and losing each and every one of the people he cared about, was responsible for, again.

It wasn't trauma or whatever fucking diagnosis the head shrinks might make. One day, he would lose. One day, the Wraith would get here, the Genii would get them, anything in the Pegasus Galaxy would crush the Atlantis expedition and everyone that John had sworn to protect would be dead.

Then he would be all alone again.

He didn't bother with a shirt or even underwear, just pulled on his one pair of clean pants, picked up the bottle from his desk, and stood in the open balcony door. The wind bit at his damp skin, but he didn't move.

The cold air kept swirling around him, mixing in with the shivering shadows, but John ignored it as he stared out at the ocean and the moonlight reflecting off the glass-calm water. It seemed so quiet down there, so cold.

John waited. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for, but still he stood in the balcony door, unable to step outside, not willing to go back into his room. The weight of the alcohol bottle was the only thing anchoring him in place.

When the knock sounded at his door, the cold wind had blown his hair dry. John ignored the sound, let his eyes follow a tiny ridge of waves in the ocean. The knock sounded again, then silence. John had started to hope that whoever it was had buggered off, when the door slid open.

"Colonel Sheppard?"

 _Teyla's hand fisting in my vest, one last burst of energy. Remus did the same thing after Wormtail shoved that fucking silver fist into Remus's gut. But Remus died in agony and I couldn't do anything to help him._ "What do you want, Teyla?" His words came out harsher than he intended.

The door slid shut. John's ears pricked, hearing the soft sound of bare feet on the cold floor. "What are you doing?" she asked.

John stared at the distant ocean. "Waiting for the 5:17 train to Paddington." He wasn't sure where the words came from, but that was how he felt. Like he wanted it all to fucking stop.

"I do not understand," Teyla's voice ghosted over the room, silencing the whispering in John's head. Even Atlantis fell silent.

"Yeah," he said, stepping back into the room. Once he was back inside, he realized how cold he was. "What's up?"

Teyla stood in a patch of moonlight, staring at him with eyes a little too large. "What was it like?"

"What was what like?" John strode across the room, stepping over his dirty clothes on his way. He dropped the still-unopened bottle on his bed and dug around for a t-shirt.

"When..." Teyla watched John move around the room. "After you were attacked by the Eratus bug, and Lt. Ford stopped your heart with that machine."

John stopped fiddling with the hem of his shirt and glanced over at Teyla. "Huh? Why?"

Teyla looked away first. She walked to the open balcony door and stood in the same spot John had occupied for so long. "Dr. Beckett says I am going to be fine."

"Okay..." John said slowly. What did she want? She had never come to his room after dark like this.

_Maybe because she almost fucking died today, you moron, and you're the one throwing the temper tantrum._

"I feel better than fine," Teyla continued. "I feel..." She lifted her chin, stared out at the water with an imperial air. "I have never felt so energized, so alive."

"I read a bit about the sarcophagus thing back on Earth," Sheppard said, watching Teyla almost glowing in the moonlight. "It really hypes up endorphins."

"Is that what this is?" Teyla demanded, whirling, her skirt flying around her legs. "Is that what did this to me? I--" She put her hands up as she stopped mid-sentence. "When we killed you on the Jumper, to rid you of the Eratus bug, what did you feel?"

John frowned. "You didn't kill me, you stopped my heart, that's all."

"Your heart no longer beat and you do not consider that to be death?"

John hated to hear the thinly masked panic in Teyla's voice under the anger. He picked up his gun holster off the bed and strapped it around his leg. "I didn't think anything," he said, not looking at Teyla. He slipped his handgun into the holster. "Ford was coming at me with the paddles, then I was in the infirmary feeling like someone electrocuted me."

"There was nothing else?"

John grabbed the bottle off the bed. "What do you want me to say? I didn't die, I don't know what's on the other side, any of that bullshit."

Teyla turned away.

 _Smooth, John. She almost dies and you start yelling at her._ "Come with me."

"Why?"

"I want to show you something." John beckoned with his hand. "Come on."

After a moment, Teyla crossed the room and together they headed out into the halls. The corridors of the city were deserted. John glanced at his watch and frowned. "Jesus, it's 2900 hours."

"We returned at a late hour," Teyla said, and for a moment it was like normal, never mind that Teyla had almost died and John had nearly gone postal and they were both walking down the hall in bare feet.

"So, did Beckett really spring you or did you jump ship?" John asked as he led Teyla down a seldom-used corridor.

Teyla had to turn sideways to squeeze through a tight juncture. "He said I was in perfect health, so I took that as a dismissal."

John snorted quietly. "You know it wasn't."

"I was not going to stay in that place," Teyla said. She clambered up a set of large bulky blocks after John. "Not without Ronon and Dr. McKay."

"Why'd they leave?" John crouched at the top of the block stack and laid his hands on the wall.

"Dr. Beckett told them to get some sleep, as they had stayed with me for some time."

John winced. "Look, I had to leave," he muttered as he pushed at the wall. _Open up for me._

"I am sure you believe that."

The door in the wall chose that moment to reveal itself, the opaque beige wall lighting up and morphing to transparent colors. Teyla drew in a sharp breath as John tapped on the blue lights, and the section of the wall slid to the side. "Come on in."

John crawled through the opening and onto the floor of the small balcony. He waited until Teyla was inside before sealing the wall again, keeping one eye on Teyla's reaction.

He wasn't disappointed. Teyla stared up at the giant room, wondering. "What is this place?" she asked in a hushed voice.

John sat cross-legged on the balcony and settled his back against the wall. "It's the heart of Atlantis," he said.

"Truly?"

"Yeah." He smoothed a hand over the floor, pulling a responsive hum from Atlantis. "Everything she does, runs through here."

Teyla turned back to the view, over ten stories of conduits and tubes and paneling, all lit up with power from ZPM powering the city. But it was more than just tubes; this lower section of the central tower hummed and buzzed with everything the city _was_.

"When did you find it?"

"A few months ago," John said. His eyes were drawn from the green and purple power conduits to Teyla. Her back was to him, but she sat upright like a child at a light show, looking this way and that to take it all in. Her hair hung around her neck, slightly damp. His gaze lingered on the line of her throat as he spoke. "I was looking for a place to think and Atlantis brought me here."

It was only after the words spilled out of his mouth that John realized he'd admitted that the city had shown him something. He had never told anyone about that before.

But when Teyla turned her head, she was smiling. "It is beautiful."

"Yeah, she is." John managed to smile back at Teyla. "Everyone thinks of the city as a collection of parts, but there's more to her." He waved his hand at the vast room. "Sometimes it's hard to remember that the city was built millions of years ago."

Teyla's smile turned wry. "Long before the Wraith."

"Long before the Wraith," John agreed. He patted the ground beside him. "Come on, sit back and enjoy the view."

"What was this entrance used for?" Teyla asked as she settled back beside John, her legs pulled up to her chest. "It is inconvenient for a spot to watch the lights."

John tapped the wall behind his head. "The writing back here says something about power lines. I figure it was a juncture to get in to fix stuff."

Teyla rested her head on the wall and watched the lights for a while. John listened to her soft breathing, and to Atlantis as the city began a soft, hesitant song. The song was so familiar, the tune of a soft Celtic dirge John had heard Professor McGonagall singing before Dumbledore's funeral. Without really knowing what he was doing, he quietly sang along with the city.

When the dirge finished and Atlantis switched into an Ancient song, Teyla sighed. "Is that a song from your world?"

"Yeah." John's word caught in his throat. He had forgotten how hopeless everything felt after Dumbledore's death.

"I did not know you sang."

"Only for the dead." John fumbled around for the bottle of alcohol and twisted off the cap. He held the bottle up in a mock toast. "To the lucky dead."

The alcohol burned on the way down, like cheap vodka, although that was a generous comparison. John handed the bottle to Teyla. She hesitated, then took a tiny sip. "This is better than the last bottle I tried," she said after she swallowed.

"You've had this moonshine before?" John asked, taking another swig. The alcohol coated his empty stomach with a warm burning. _Yeah, this won't take long at all._

"Yes." She gave him a look before reaching for the bottle. "Who have you sung for?"

"Huh?" John asked as he pulled one leg up to his chest.

"You said you only sing for the dead."

"Oh." John rubbed his eyes, then stared at his wrist. He'd forgotten to put his black wristband back on, and the mound of scar tissue where Lucius Malfory had carved the Dark Mark into John's arm was a little too visible. "My, uh... This guy I knew when I was a kid, he was killed when I was sixteen. I heard someone singing it then."

"Was he a friend?"

John turned his wrist over so he didn't have to see the old scars. "Sort of. More like a mentor."

"How was he killed?"

"One of my teachers murdered him." Then John shook his head. "But he was dying anyway and Snape killed him so goddamned motherfucking Draco Malfoy wouldn't have to, not that it ever fucking mattered." The names tasted like danger on John's tongue. But Teyla didn't know any of them, and knew nothing about Earth magic. She couldn't have given him away even if she wanted to. He took the bottle away from Teyla and took a long drink. It burned all the way down. "My friend, he told me, when I'd almost died when I was eleven, that death was like some great adventure. How can it be an adventure when everyone is killed?"

He snapped his mouth shut before he said anything really stupid. Teyla stared at him with those indecipherable eyes, and he really wished she'd stop.

"How old were you?"

"What?"

"When you first almost died?" Teyla took another sip from the bottle, licking up a drop of alcohol off her lip. "I was three, when the Wraith came. My mother threw me clear of the culling beam, but she was taken." Her stoic voice did nothing to hide the pain in her eyes.

"My mother died for me, too," John muttered. "Both my parents did, the first time. I was just over a year old."

"One _year_? What happened?"

John shrugged. "The bad guy came knocking. Killed my dad first, then gave my mother a choice. He'd kill her then me, or she could stand aside and let him kill me."

Teyla set the bottle down with a thump. "What sort of creature would do that?" she demanded, horrified.

John took the bottle from Teyla and took a drink. He should probably stop this soon, the room was starting to wobble. At least the streaming grey tremors had gone away for now. "You know how the Wraith eat humans?" Teyla nodded. "Voldemort was like that, only he didn't do it for food, he did it because he enjoyed pain and hatred and power. He was told that if he killed me, he'd be safe."

"What happened?"

"My mother didn't move." _A flash of green light haunting my nightmares for so many years, and high evil laughter_. "He killed her and tried to kill me, but it didn't work." John shrugged. "Everyone thought he'd died, but he wasn't and he came back when I was eleven, and started again."

"Did no one else stand against him?" Teyla demanded, going up on one knee.

"Some did. They died." John let out a sharp bitter laugh. "Hell, everyone died anyway, it didn't matter."

"When did you kill him?"

A shiver ran down John's spine. "Why do you think I was the one who killed him?"

Teyla laid her hand on John's arm, so warm. "Because you are the one who came after us into a Wraith hive ship," she said. "You defended this city from the Genii. You flew a bomb into the hive ship. You do all these things to defend us, and you walk towards death as a man who does not expect to walk away."

John licked his lip nervously. "McKay--"

"Rodney uses his mind to solve the impossible, because he cannot accept the possibility of his own death," Teyla said, inching closer. "You _do_ the impossible because you walk into every moment expecting to die."

"Teyla--"

"I died tonight, and there was nothing there," Teyla whispered, too fragile. She shifted her weight so she was leaning against John's bent leg. "Dr. Beckett says it is not so, but I _know_ what happened!"

"Hey, it's okay," John said quickly, sitting up and putting his hands on her bare arms. "So what if you died for a few seconds? You're back, and--"

Teyla pushed away from him. "It is not okay!" she exclaimed. "If there is nothing after we die, then what matters? Why bother to fight the Wraith at all?"

"We fight for the same reason we do anything else!" John shouted at her. "Because we're here and we may as well keep it that way!"

"But nothing we do will matter!"

"If nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do!" John was far too drunk to get involved in a philosophical debate about anything with anyone. "If it didn't fucking matter, then I wouldn't have busted my ass to get you back through the Gate this afternoon!"

"Why did you?"

John had absolutely no idea what to say. "What the hell do you mean?"

"What would you have done if Ronon had taken the shot? Or Rodney?"

It was like she was digging in his mind for the very images he'd been trying to avoid all afternoon. The only reason they had been able to get back to the Gate was that Teyla was so very tiny. They'd never have been able to carry a wounded Ronon, or Rodney.

Rodney had been standing right beside Teyla when the blast hit her in the chest. Another few inches, and the hole would have been in Rodney's gut. Rodney would have died and that couldn't happen. Rodney was the only thing that kept Atlantis from falling apart. Hell, most days he was the only thing that kept John grounded.

John pressed his back against the wall and blindly reached for the bottle. He wasn't drunk enough to deal with the thought of Rodney dying.

When he finished, Teyla took the bottle from him and took another drink herself before curling up beside him. "No one died today, John," she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

John stared blankly at the lights streaming up and down the opposite wall. "It's a matter of odds," he muttered. "Sooner or later, our luck's going to run out."

"But in the meantime, it is what we do that matters."

"I thought that was my line," John said, but faltered when he looked over at Teyla. He didn't think he'd ever quite seen that expression on her face before, especially not directed at him.

She glanced at his mouth for a moment, then looked back into his eyes. _Jesus fuck,_ John thought muddily. _She can't... she won't..._

"I do not want to die, John," she whispered. Then Teyla kissed him.

There were several things wrong with that sentence, John thought fuzzily as he found himself with a lapful of Athosian. For starters, it was _Teyla_ , whom he'd held in a position similar to this earlier in the day, although now she wasn't bleeding and dying, but more squirming and pressing. Then there was the kissing part, which was going a hell of a lot better than John had imagined. Her mouth tasted like vodka and warmth and the faintest hint of copper, but that was probably his fucked-up imagination.

The last wrong thing in this equation was him. He really shouldn't be letting an emotionally traumatized teammate straddle his thighs and kiss him like the world would end if they didn't do this. He shouldn't have been kissing her back just as hard, his hands skimming around her slender waist and pulling her closer to him. Most of all, he really shouldn't be reaching up under her skirt as if she was the only real thing in the universe.

_I need to stop this._

Now.

Maybe in a few minutes.

Teyla broke from the kiss with a gasp, pulling back enough to yank John's shirt over his head. _Getting naked isn't a good way to stop this._ John reigned in his hormones enough catch Teyla's face as she came at him again. "Teyla--"

She kissed him, feather light. "Please," she whispered against his lips.

John shut her up by deepening the kiss. She clenched her thighs against his hips, grinding against him, and it was apparent that he was as caught up in the moment as she was.

Her fingers slid between them, going for the waistband on his pants. He shoved her hands out of the way and reached under her thigh to pull his gun out of the holster and shove it against wall, out of the way. Then he pulled out his headset and set it on top of the gun.

Teyla watched him, then solemnly laid her headset beside his. That simple act made everything more real in John's mind. They were really going to do this. The movement stretched Teyla out on John's lap, and he took the opportunity to trace fingers up her stomach to unlace her bodice. Part of John's mind was screaming at him that undressing a teammate was a very good way to mess up his whole life, but he ignored that. Teyla wasn't military. She'd almost died. He trusted her. They'd sparred together so often, they knew how the other moved, this was sort of like that.

That little delusion died when he pushed her bodice over her head. Naked from the waist up, she looked... Wow. John ran his hand down her side, cupping the curve of her breast, then continuing lower, to where there had been a large bleeding hole in her side. Now, not even a scratch remained to mark its place.

John pressed his hand against her ribs, feeling them solid under his palm, and something frantic churned in his gut. A second later, and she would have died. The blood that he'd washed off his body in the shower would have been the closest he'd ever have gotten to her.

He couldn't wait. He undid his pants buttons and shoved the cloth down far enough to pull himself out. Teyla took him in her hand and John forgot how to breathe for a long moment. He would have liked to have watched what she was doing, but she started kissing down his throat at the same time and he forgot what he was trying to do.

Luckily, his body hadn't forgotten what to do with a half-naked woman. Hands moved over skin, almost too rough. John wasn't sure if it was him or her that pushed Teyla's skirt up her thighs, or which one of them pulled her underwear to the side.

Then Teyla shifted her hips, and he was sliding into her. The sensation tore a moan from his throat. So warm, so alive, so not dead.

_Still alive._

Breathing heavily, Teyla began to move, John's hands on her hips. John might have been able to pretended this didn't mean anything, even as Teyla sank down on him as far as she could go, but then Teyla put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself and rested her forehead against his.

 _That_ made it real, the intimacy of the Athosian embrace between them. John closed his eyes as he slid his hands around Teyla's waist and up to her shoulders. After a moment, Teyla kissed him as she started moving once more.

Their movements matched, getting sloppy as they got closer. In spite of the alcohol, or many because of it, it didn't last long. John managed to open his eyes in time to see Teyla throw her head back and cry out, then he went over, pulling her down as hard as he could, his fingers digging into her thighs.

He came back to himself slowly, having a hard time catching his breath. Teyla wrapped her arms around his back and rested her cheek on his shoulder.

Running his hand up her bare back didn't seem awkward. Not yet, anyway. "You okay?" he murmured.

Teyla nodded against his neck. "And you?"

"Yeah."

He pulled back first, and then it was really awkward. Without looking at each other, they managed to disentangle themselves and rearrange their clothing.

John felt like he should say something, but he couldn't think of the right way to phrase what he wanted to say. It couldn't ever happen again, even if it had just been frantic drunken "reassurance that we're not dead" comfort sex.

He wasn't sorry.

In the end, he grabbed his headset and slid it into his ear as he laid back on the balcony floor, cushioning his head with an arm to watch the dancing lights above. Atlantis's song was quiet and happy now.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teyla lie down beside him, not touching but close enough to feel warm. "Even if our 'luck' runs out one day, we will still have made a difference," Teyla said, continuing the conversation as if they hadn't just fucked on a hidden service balcony deep in Atlantis. "By standing against the Wraith, we make a difference."

John cleared his throat. "But what if it's not enough?" He laid his free hand on his stomach, drumming his fingers. "If the Wraith can't get to Earth, then they'll keep eating every human in this galaxy until there's nobody left."

"It is not your fault, Col-- John. You did not make the Wraith."

"No, I just woke them all up." John blinked hard. It was exactly like with Voldemort and the magical civil war, only this time, John's actions wouldn't simply kill the people of one community, they would eliminate a whole galaxy full of people.

And if the Wraith got to Earth--

John closed his eyes. He didn't believe in any kind of God, and there was no one he could ask to forgive him. The dead did not grant absolution.

"How many people have you lost?" Teyla asked softly.

The sound of her voice centered John. He couldn't take back what he had done, but he could keep trying to make it better, to fix the mess he'd made. "All of them."

Her hand settled over his, squeezing gently. "You have not lost us."

There was something John needed to say, to apologize for almost letting her die, for taking so much from her and her people, but Atlantis distracted him with a wistful sigh, and he fell asleep.

* * *

"Colonel Sheppard?"

 _Fuck._ John slapped at his headset, wincing as the movement set his head pounding. "Yes?"

"Did I wake you up?" Beckett asked.

"Yeah, Doc, you did." John opened his eyes, then quickly closed them. He'd forgotten how really bright things were in this room. "What?"

"I was wondering if you'd seen Teyla since last night."

John's eyes popped back open. Teyla lay curled up at his side, not touching, but close. _Yeah, I saw I hell of a lot of Teyla last night,_ he thought. _Shit._ "Why do you ask?" he said instead.

"She's not answering her headset and I wanted her to come back in for some more tests. We can't seem to find her."

Somehow, John managed to avoid saying _Hold on while I wake her up._ "If I see her, I'll let her know you want to talk to her. She probably took her headset out to sleep."

"I hope you're right," Beckett said, and cut the connection.

John stared up. Overhead, above the ceiling and the floors of circuitry and metal, was the base of the control room. Idly, John wondered what time it was. He felt worse than the previous day.

 _Yesterday you just got your life-force sucked out of you by a six-million-year-old city,_ John reminded himself. _Today, there's that, plus you're hung-over and hungry._

The thought of food made John's stomach churn. He managed to sit up, realizing that his entire left arm had fallen asleep under his head. It was sort of neat to watch, flopping his numb hand back and forth.

John used his limp arm to nudge Teyla's hip. "Hey, wake up."

Teyla opened her eyes immediately, then scrunched them shut just as fast.

"Beckett's looking for you," John continued, handing over her headset. His arm was beginning to prickle with pins and needles. "He sounds worried."

Without moving any other muscle in her body, Teyla put her headset into her ear and pressed gently on the button. "Dr. Beckett?"

John shook his arm while Teyla waited for Beckett to respond.

"No, I am fine. I fell asleep. No, not in my room." A long pause. "I feel fine. Really. There is no need for me to... In an hour, then. I-- No, I will be there in an hour. There is no need for me to rush." She reached up and cut the connection.

"Anything wrong?" John asked. His arm had enough feeling back for him to put his gun into his holster.

"Dr. Beckett wishes to run more tests on me." Teyla sat up slowly, moving with great care. "I think it would be best if I shower first."

"Good idea." John considered taking the alcohol bottle with him, but decided against it. He'd leave it here, just in case. "Showering is good."

"Then we should leave."

John didn't know what she was thinking, and that was probably for the best. He went to the entrance panel and opened it up, then let Teyla out before sealing it once more.

They walked in silence to the juncture of the hallway where they would part ways, John trying to figure out what to say the entire way. When Teyla turned to leave, he said, "Hey, are you going to be all right?"

The stiff set of her shoulders and back gave him his answer. "I will, Colonel Sheppard," Teyla said formally. "I will speak with you later." With that, she walked off down the hall.

John watched her go, then shook his head as he padded down the hall on bare feet towards his own room. _You fucking idiot!_ he berated himself. _Totally brilliant way to mess up any trust you had with her!_

 _Although it didn't mess things up with Hermione... but Teyla's not Hermione._ John got into his room without running into anyone and locked the door behind him. He jerked off his clothes and dropped them on the bed, then almost tripped on the dirty clothes from the previous day, now crunchy with dried blood.

 _And Teyla started it._ Shaking his head, John continued into the bathroom and headed right into the shower. He turned the water a little too cold, so he wouldn't linger, then quickly washed.

 _Even if Teyla started it, that didn't mean you had to go along with it, no matter how drunk you were._ John turned off the water and toweled dry. _She was freaking out, and you--_

John draped the towel around his neck as he looked into the mirror above the sink. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked more drawn than normal. As much as the thought of food nauseated him, he needed to eat, to put on some more weight, in case they ran into a situation without food the next time they went through the Gate.

_I was freaking out too._

What had he done?


	3. Ancient Blood (2/4)

* * *

"Colonel Sheppard," Dr. Zelenka said in greeting as John walked into the labs.

"Hey, Doc." John continued over to Rodney's desk, where the astrophysicist was bent double over a machine. “Morning, Rodney."

"Sheppard." McKay didn't look up from his readings. "Did Beckett talk to you?"

"Looking for Teyla? Yeah, she's down there now." John rubbed at his chin. He'd made himself shave, and his face felt a little weird, like it always did with a hangover. "You got any coffee?"

McKay finally glanced up. He looked at Sheppard for a long moment, and something shifted in his eyes. "The cafeteria has coffee."

"You guys make it better." What the hell was wrong with Rodney?

"We're working here, Colonel, perhaps you can go find someone else to pester," Rodney snapped. He picked up his datapad and his coffee mug, and stalked deeper into the lab.

Baffled, John looked over at Zelenka. The scientist looked vaguely apologetic. "I guess that means no coffee," John tried to joke.

Zelenka shrugged. "You should adjust your shirt before going to cafeteria," he advised, and pointed at his throat before following Rodney.

 _My shirt?_ John blinked for a moment, then a horrible thought occurred to him. He turned and headed toward the door, where the scientists had stored a large mirror.

Sure enough, peeking out from under the edge of his t-shirt neck, was a purple-red mark. _Teyla gave me a hickey._ John wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

 _Oh God!_ Suddenly, Rodney's anger made sense. _He saw the hickey, and I said Teyla was with Beckett and no one could find her last night..._

Crying was probably the way to go.

John left the labs, found a deserted hallway, and banged his forehead against the wall a few times. _Why do I always find a way to perfectly fuck up my life?_

* * *

Three days later, John had discovered that not only was Rodney still pissed at him, but Beckett shot him angry glares every time they passed, Teyla was avoiding him, and his strength level wasn't anywhere near it had been before Atlantis ripped into him to save Teyla's life.

On the upside, the scientists had a fun new life-saving toy to play with.

John felt like he'd gotten the raw end of the deal.

John spent a lot more time with Major Lorne and the Marines, running over training schedules and duty rosters and team assignments. One thing he'd learned from Hogwarts and its House system was that if people worked in the same groups too long, rivalries began to develop. He wasn't going to have that happen under his watch.

On the fifth day, John showed up at Elizabeth's office, new duty roster in hand. She waved him in while she finished typing on her laptop. John took the opportunity to slouch in the chair, resisting the urge to close his eyes. No matter how much sleep he got, or how much food he ate, he felt dragged out.

"What can I do for you, John?" Elizabeth asked, closing her computer.

John pushed himself up with a sigh. "New duty roster for the Marines," he said, handing it to her. "I was thinking about testing it out next week, then if it works, putting it into effect in about a month. Maybe take a look, see if you have any feedback."

"The military is your responsibility," Elizabeth reminded him as she looked down the list.

John rolled his eyes. "You sound like Colonel Caldwell," he said. "You know the scientists, I know the Marines. Just let me know if you see any potential personnel conflicts."

"I will. Thanks."

John shrugged and pushed himself out of the chair. "Right."

"John?" Elizabeth said before he could leave. "Can I speak with you for a moment?"

 _No._ "What do you want?" he asked, sitting back down with a thump.

Elizabeth folded her hands together in front of her on the desk, something she only did when she was nervous about something and didn't want to show it. John's heart sank. "I've noticed a bit of friction among your team in the last few days," she said carefully. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No."

"John--"

"It's little stuff, Elizabeth," John lied. "You know, near-death stuff."

"That's not little."

"But it's our problem. We'll handle it."

Elizabeth looked at him. John fought the urge to squirm in his chair. She had a way of looking at him that made him wonder if she could read his mind. Near enough; she had a preternaturally keen sense of what was happening on the base. "Will you handle it in a few days?" she asked.

"Maybe," John said slowly. "Why?"

Elizabeth smiled, which in itself wasn't all that interesting, but what came next was. "Ronon and I have been discussing his time Running from the Wraith, and he recently recalled a planet with ruins that he suspects might be Ancient in origin."

It took all of John's restraint to not raise his eyebrows at Elizabeth. What he wanted to ask was, _How did you get Ronon talking?_ but instead he said, "What kind of ruins?"

"His memory wasn't clear; it was several years ago." Elizabeth leaned forward. "But he does remember writing in Ancient, and several things of interest."

"Do any of these items of interest include a ZPM?" John had to ask.

"Nothing quite so definite," Elizabeth said with a smile. "But I'd like you to take your team and check out the area, if it's safe for us to send through the anthropology team to look things over."

"When?" John asked, glancing down at his notes. He had scheduled several interviews with some Marines, but he could delay those a little. Or maybe move them up. Or get them out of bed. He wasn't above a bit of Marine character building.

"Would you be able to wrap up any problems by tomorrow?"

"Elizabeth, we haven't got problems, we--"

"John?" Elizabeth gave him a look. "Whatever it is, fix it."

Pushing down a wave of frustration, John nodded. "Yes, ma'am." Before she could ask anything else of him, he left.

 _Frustrating woman,_ John thought. Why hadn't she come out and said what she wanted him to do? Diplomacy didn't work well with him. He was more point and shoot.

Speaking of shooting things, Ronon was coming up the Gateroom stairs. "Sheppard."

"Ronon," John said, moving on. Ronon walked with him. "I hear you're telling Elizabeth your life story?"

"Like you ever asked." Ronon shook his head, dreadlocks flying. "She listens."

John bit back a groan. The last thing he needed was one of his team members and the leader of the expedition making googley eyes at each other over the briefing-room table. "Yes, she does," he said vaguely.

"Yeah. Anyway, we going?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Because you look like crap."

John stopped and stared at Ronon. "What?"

"Ever since Teyla got hurt, you've looked bad." Ronon propped himself up against a handy wall. "Why?"

"I'm fine," John said shortly. "Let's have a briefing in five hours to talk about this planet."

"No."

" _No?_ "

"I'm not taking you to this place if you're sick," Ronon said. "You're too heavy to carry back to the Gate."

"You sonofa--"

"You're the only one Beckett didn't see after Teyla's accident," Ronon said, pushing off the wall. "If he says you can go, we go."

"What the hell gives you--"

"See you later," Ronon interrupted, walking away.

John breathed in through his nose, trying to avoid screaming at Ronon down the crowded hall. What gave the laconic man the right to tell him he looked like shit? John was the team leader here, not Ronon.

The really sad thing was that John wasn't running after him. _I must be feeling worse than I thought._

And if he went to talk to Beckett, maybe he could get something for his perpetual headache.

_Damn it._

* * *

"Why the bloody hell didn't you come to see me before?" Beckett demanded, stalking about the infirmary. "You're borderline anemic, you've got a potassium deficiency, and let's not even go into your metabolism!"

John shrugged. "It's not that bad. Right?"

Beckett glared, as if John had done all this to spite his doctor. "You're still functioning fine, barely." He pulled vials from the wall and set them on a tray. "But it's no wonder you feel like crap!"

"I wouldn't go that far--"

"That's what you said to the nurse, and I quote, 'I feel like crap'," Beckett shot at him, bringing out a needle. "All right, when did it start?"

"When did what start?"

Beckett pointed the needle at him. "You know damned well what."

John really didn't want the man to be pissed when he approached with pointy things, so he gave in. "The day Teyla got hurt."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. What's that?"

"An injectable vitamin," Beckett said. "And you need to eat better, I'll give you a diet plan." He expertly administered the vitamin shot. "Can you tell me what you did that day that did this?"

"What, besides having the city suck energy out of me to heal Teyla?" John asked, wrinkling his nose at the needle.

"What did you say?"

John raised an eyebrow as he pushed some gauze against the needle mark. "I told you about this."

"No you didn't, son. Start from the beginning."

John knew better than to argue with the Doc when he was in this mood. "When the beam hit us in the Gateroom, it felt like it ripped something out of me when Atlantis healed Teyla."

"Then what?"

"Then I've just been kind of slow ever since. It's nothing. I've had worse."

"It's not nothing," Beckett said. "What did you do that night, after you left the infirmary?"

John suddenly became very interested in the gauze. "Nothing much."

Becket shook his head. "Anything you tell me will be kept in confidence."

"No."

"Colonel, I'm not clearing you for duty until you tell me what happened that day." From the expression on the doctor's face, he meant it.

 _Goddamn it._ John looked around, making sure no one else was within earshot. "Not much. I just, um, kind of threw up." He went back to the gauze. "And maybe had a bit too much of that moonshine the botanists make," he muttered.

Beckett pinched his lips together, like he wanted to bury his face in his hands, but he was too professional. "Do you try to make my life complicated?"

"Believe me when I say you were the furthest thing from my mind!" John exclaimed quietly.

Beckett shook his head. "Are your symptoms getting any worse?"

"No, it's a bit better."

"Fine." Beckett scribbled something on a pad of paper and handed a slip to John. "Eat this, get enough sleep, and come back to see me tomorrow. If you're looking better, I might clear you to go on this mission of Ronon's."

"Does everybody but me know about these ruins but me?" John demanded, reading the prescription.

"Yes. Now, unless you want me to strap you to a bed for some sleep, get out of my infirmary."

John stuffed the paper into his pocket. "What's your problem?"

"I have work to do."

"Is this about Teyla?"

Beckett sighed. "The two of you are adults."

"Yes, we are."

"And you're both bloody stubborn and annoying."

"Hey!"

"Look, Colonel, if my suspicious are right, then you were physiologically affected by that beam as well," Becket said. "You, negatively, while Teyla was healed. We know the Goa'uld sarcophagus affects the mind with repeated usage."

"That's not it," John told him. "That's not why-- That's not it."

"It might be." Becket made shooing motions with his hands. "Go eat. Come back tomorrow."

"Fine." John hopped off the bed, and didn't even sway. "Bye."

Just because he had been hit by that beam didn't mean everyone else in the city had to go crazy.

* * *

"Apple?"

Teyla looked up from her lunch. "That is not an apple."

John looked at it. "It's sort of apple-shaped."

"Do you want something?"

He slid into the seat across from her. "Yeah. Listen, we need to talk."

Was it his imagination, or did she blush? He didn't have time to ask, because she deliberately laid down her fork and pushed her lunch away. "Yes, we do."

"Right."

"Indeed."

They sat there for a few minutes, letting the sounds of the cafeteria wash over them. Then they both tried to speak at once.

"I am sorry," Teyla said, looking down at her hands.

"No, please go ahead," John said. This was turning into a bad comedy sketch, and he really didn't have the time or the energy. He needed to talk to Teyla, deal with Rodney, browbeat Ronon, yell at several Marines, and then maybe, _maybe_ , get some sleep. He was tired just thinking about it.

"Thank you." Teyla drew a deep breath, then raised her gaze. "I need to apologize."

"You-- What?" Damn it, she looked downright mortified, and John had no idea why.

"I need to apologize for my... behavior, that night." Her word were deliberate, as if she'd practiced this little speech several times. "I was... overwrought, with all that had occurred, and I took liberties with our friendship and your inebriation."

It wasn't funny, but John felt hysterical laughter bubbling up in his chest. He ruthlessly shoved it down. Teyla might kill him if he started laughing now. "You really don't have to apologize--"

"Yes, I do."

"No," John said firmly. "You really don't." He leaned across the table so he could speak quietly. "I was coming over here to see if there was anything I could do to, you know, make us okay."

She stared at him for a long moment. "I think the best way to make us 'okay' would be to put this behind us and never discuss this again."

"Deal."

Teyla smiled faintly and returned to her lunch tray. "Has Ronon spoken to you about his proposed mission?"

John rolled his eyes. "Is there anyone who doesn't know about this plan?"

"I believe that one of the chemists has been in the infirmary who does not know," Teyla said, spearing a small vegetable with her fork. "Dr. Weir has been very vocal about her enthusiasm for the mission."

John chose to let the more disturbing aspects of that sentence fly over his head. "So, rocks."

"Yes." Teyla smiled again. "You should tell Dr. McKay about the observation room."

The change of topic was a little too much for John. "Why?"

"Because it would be of great interest to him, you know how he is about the city."

"He's pretty busy these days." John tried to deflect Teyla's statement, uncomfortable with the sensation settling in his gut.

Teyla's smile turned to a frown. "Too busy for this?"

"You know how Rodney is." John realized with a shock that he was jealous. Of Rodney, putting his busy hands on Atlantis's inner workings. _I need some serious help._

"I do." Teyla glared at John. "You must tell him of this."

"I will," John said defensively.

She narrowed her eyes at him, as if she didn't believe him.

"I will. Hey, how's things on the mainland?"

As distractions went, John knew she didn't fall for it, but still, she told him a story about how Jinto and his friend Wex had single-handedly built a fishing weir. The story was silly and light, and it gave John the tiniest bit of hope that he hadn't destroyed everything between them after all.

* * *

By comparison, the conversation with Rodney was a fucking disaster.

"Go away!"

"I can't go away, you jerk!" To illustrate his point, John sat his butt down in Rodney's work chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "We have to talk."

"I have nothing to say to you!" Rodney went back to work on his machine, and John started counting down from ten in his head. When he got to one, Rodney spun up and around. "How could you?"

"How could I what?" John asked in resignation. He was really, really glad that the lab was devoid of an audience.

Rodney waved his hands in the air. "Do that thing with Teyla?"

John narrowed his eyes. "What. Thing?" he said carefully.

"Oh, don't sit there and be all scary Air Force glowery at me," Rodney snapped. "You know damned well what I'm talking about!"

John counted to ten, then to twenty. When that failed to calm him down, he spoke anyway. "I'm only going to say this once. First off, it's none of your business. Second, Teyla and I have talked about this and come to an understanding, so it's not an issue. Do you understand?"

Rodney shook his head. "She almost died," he said after a minute, and there was something so unfamiliar in his voice that it took John a moment to realize what it was. Fear. "We almost... she almost died, and you shouldn't have done what you did."

Since John didn't disagree with Rodney, there was nothing he could say. So he left.

* * *

A day later, as John used the Jumper to dial up Ronon's world of ruins, Rodney and Teyla sat in the back flight chairs in a glowering silence. John tried to ignore them as the Jumper lowered into the Gateroom, but finally the silence became too much for him to deal with. Beckett had given him a clean bill of health, with the warning of no undue stress to his system, and Elizabeth had sent them on their way.

"Okay, fuck it." John held the Jumper in place before the open Stargate and turned around in his chair. "Are we going to be okay?" he asked Rodney and Teyla.

Teyla, who was pissed that John had not yet told Rodney about the Atlantis power room, raised her chin. "Perfectly fine," she bit out.

"Bullshit," John exclaimed. "Are we going to go through that Gate and be able to deal with whatever serious and fucked-up dangers we find? Because if not, I'm turning this Jumper around until we can sort out this mess."

Rodney and Teyla exchanged glances. John wasn't too sure if they knew why the other was mad, and he really didn't want to be around when Rodney tried to explain to Teyla he was trying to protect her virtue. Then Teyla shook her head. "I am willing to do that."

"Me too," Rodney said quickly. "Let's go."

John raised his eyebrows. Turning back to the front, he saw Ronon giving them all the 'those wacky Earthlings' look. "What about you?"

"I'm good."

"Jumper One," Elizabeth's voice came over their headsets. "Is there a problem?"

"Nah," John said, taking the controls again. "Just had to make sure Rodney brought enough gum for everyone. See you in a bit."

"Be safe," Elizabeth said, just as she did before every mission, and John flew the Jumper through the Gate.

"Trees," Rodney said dispiritedly when they shot out of the Gate on the other side. "It's always trees. Why is it always trees?"

"Come on, Rodney, trees are pretty," John said, pulling up the scanner.

"Pretty full of pollen. Alien pollen. Freaky alien trees wanting to have sex with our eyes."

Ronon made a choking sound. John faked a gag. "God, Rodney, can you be any grosser?" He looked over at Ronon. "Quick, tell me where to go."

"I can tell you where to go," Rodney grumbled, but it was quiet enough that John could pretend he didn't hear.

"Three tarlaks that way," Ronon said, pointing. John did the conversion from Satedan measurement to imperial, and came up with six miles. "There is a rise in the cliff face, with some flat space to leave the ship."

"I see it," John muttered. He scanned the area for ships, but there was no sign of anything unusual. "Looks like the Wraith aren't here."

"Looks like," Ronon agreed. "When I was here before, there were no humans I could find."

"How long did it take the Wraith to find you here?" Teyla asked from the backseat.

Ronon stared out the window, expressionless. "Four days," he finally said.

Four days. Seven years on the run from the Wraith, after having his home world destroyed. _Fuck. And I was freaking out because I had to fight Voldemort for seven years,_ John thought. At least he'd had some good times in those years. First kiss, good friends, a chance to be normal, if only for a little while. He hadn't had to sleep with one eye open all that time.

"It's over there." Ronon pointed down at a tiny clearing beside a sloping stone hill.

"Okay." John touched the Jumper down in the space, branches brushing the sides of the ship as they landed. "Gear up, everyone. We're looking for all kinds of threats, dangers, anything that might eat the archeologists."

"Or us."

"Or us, Rodney." John set the cloak over the ship, and was the last to leave. His team was already standing outside, armed to the teeth and ready for anything. "Everybody remember where we parked."

"That wasn't funny when Kirk did it in Star Trek IV," Rodney groused as he hurried to keep up with Ronon.

"Yeah, but I've got better hair," John quipped back.

"And we are not looking for whales," Teyla added. Rodney and John both turned around to look at her, John's eyes bugging out. "What? Major Lorne brought the movies with him from Earth."

"Major _Lorne_ is into Star Trek?" Rodney asked, incredulous.

"Colonel O'Neill suggested it," Teyla said, and nodded ahead of them. "We are going to lose Ronon."

Further over the ridge, Ronon was already halfway up the hill. "Fine," John said. "Ladies first."

Teyla's eyebrow went up. "For what purpose?"

"Because..." John's voice trailed off. Saying 'because you're a girl' would get his ass kicked, and going for the injury angle would lead them back to subject better left in the past. "Because I'm team leader and I should be in the back."

"Yes, you are team leader, but that means you should be in the middle, in case of an emergency," Teyla replied, anger heating her words.

"Oh, for God's sake!" Rodney exclaimed. "Can't you two fight about this later?"

John and Teyla looked at Rodney, then at each other. John could tell the same thing occurred to Teyla. "Fine, Rodney." John clapped a hand on Rodney's shoulder. "You can bring up the rear." He and Teyla started walking.

"What? No! That's not what I meant!"

* * *

"That... wasn't... fair."

"If you stop talking, Rodney, you'll get your breath back faster," John advised, hauling Rodney up the last few steps into the cave. "It's not like Teyla or I would have let anything eat you."

Rodney panted and raised wide eyes to Teyla. She took pity on him, as she always did when he was inches away from hyperventilating. "We would have ensured your safety, Dr. McKay."

"Good!" Rodney puffed. "Great."

John thumped Rodney on the back in a friendly manner, then glanced down as his life signs detector. Only the four of them. "Hey, Ronon, where are these ruins?"

"In here," Ronon's disembodied voice drew them deeper into the cave.

"That's interesting," Rodney said.

"Define interesting," Teyla asked, the light from her P-90 sweeping the cave floor.

"Oh God, oh God, we're all going to die?" John said.

"Would you _stop_ quoting science fiction movies?" Rodney demanded. "I mean there are residual power readings coming from somewhere in this cave."

"How powerful?" John asked him. There was something pricking at the back of his head, something he should know. It wasn't the power Atlantis gave off, it was different, older.

It made him want to run.

"I can't tell you that, not until we find the source. It might be shielded."

"Over here," Ronon said. His voice led them toward a large crack in the wall. Rodney went first, then Teyla. John shone his light back the way they had come, illuminating their footprints on the dusty floor.

"This is amazing!" Rodney exclaimed.

John turned to ask him what was so neat. As he moved his foot, he stepped over a magical circle of protection, the spell tingling up through his body as his flashlight swept over the Celtic runes inscribed in the floor and the walls, all the way up to the ceiling.

He forgot how to breathe, to react, anything, as his flashlight came to rest on an ancient stone archway, cracked and crumbling. The tattered black veil that hung over the unsupported archway fluttered very slightly in the still air of the cave, as if it had just been touched.

_Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix's jet of red light: he was laughing at her._

_"Come on, you can do better than that!" he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room._

_The second jet of light hit him squarely in the chest._

_The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock.._

_It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil handing from the arch._

"No."


	4. Ancient Blood (3/4)

* * *

"What do you mean, no?" Rodney asked, running a scan on the arch. "It is amazing! I can't figure out if the power readings are coming from the device or from another source."

The veil moved in the dead air, fluttering as if something behind it wanted to escape. "Rodney--"

"And I have never seen readings like this before! They look Ancient in origin, but slightly different from what we've seen in the city." As Rodney spoke, he stepped closer to the arch, his hand only inches from the veil.

John grabbed Rodney's jacket and hauled him away from the arch. The scientist stumbled as he went back, but John took hold of his shoulders and shoved him against the wall of the cave.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rodney yelled.

"Rule one about dealing with archways with freaky power sources on alien planets," John ground out, his heart pounding painfully against his ribs. "Do. Not. Touch!" He gave Rodney a hard shake.

Then Teyla and Ronon were there, pulling them apart. "I wasn't going to touch it!" Rodney shouted. "I was taking readings!"

"We all learned a lesson from your experience," Teyla said, putting herself in front of Rodney. "He would not have touched the arch."

"What if something came out from behind the veil, huh?" John demanded, shrugging off Ronon's hands. "Or if you tripped?" The idea of Rodney falling through the arch, just as Sirius has vanished from his life, choked off whatever else John tried to say.

"I wasn't going to trip, I know what I'm doing!" Rodney's glare turned confused. "What is wrong with you?"

John shook his head. He looked down and realized his feet were directly on the circle of runes. Taking a step to the side moved him out of the magic, and instantly his anxiety level plummeted. He sucked in a deep breath. "I don't want you getting hurt," he said.

"I'm not going to get hurt," Rodney said, frowning in his confusion. "Why do you keep harping on that?"

John picked up a tiny rock from the floor, and hurled it through the arch. The edge of the stone hit the veil and then vanished into the arch.

Rodney blinked. "No sound."

"No sound."

"It should have come through the other side and hit the ground."

"Now do you get it?" John shone his P-90 light on the circle of carved runes. Unlike the protection circles John had seen as a child, this one was carved vertically in front of the arch, instead of on the ground around it.

"How did you know it was going to do that?" Ronon asked.

"Do what?" It had been almost two decades since John had needed to read runes, and he was having to wrack his brain. Was it at all possible that the Ancients had written these here before they left for Earth the thousand years ago? Had writing like this even existed back then?

"Know the stone wouldn't come out the other side."

John traced his fingers over the _Wunjo_ rune and didn't answer. There was no way that this could be the same arch as the one in the Department of Mysteries, no possible chance there was another way back to Earth this way in this galaxy they hadn't found. Maybe there was more than one archway and veil, like there was more than one Stargate.

 _Like the Stargate._ John traced another rune. Someone had carved the markings with magic; even touching them sent a familiar shiver up John's spine. "These are recent," John said, concentrating on the carvings in the wall. "There's not a lot of dust in them." He frowned as he moved his light up the wall. "Jesus, what fool would use _Perth_ in this?"

"Colonel Sheppard? Hi," Rodney snapped. "What are you doing?"

"I believe he is reading the writing," Teyla said. "It is not a form of language I recognize."

"They're runes," John muttered, frowning harder as he took in more of the spell. Whoever had cast this thing had to be psychotic; the conflicting magic was intense. "Ancient runes from Earth. Not, like 'Ancient' ancient, just old."

"That's not possible," Rodney said. "Runes developed after the Ancients left this galaxy for Earth."

John stepped back into the circle, feeling the magic run over his skin. It felt like desperation and fear and horror. It was the first time John had tasted magic in so many years, and it made him want to scream. He stepped out. "Whoever cast this was in a hurry," he said, bending down to touch the center runes on the floor, directly in front of the archway. "They don't really line up, and anyone who put _Mannaz_ and _Hagalaz_ together couldn't have been thinking clearly." _Like someone who was just hit with magic and shoved through an arch?_

John shoved that wild hope down. Sirius was dead. He couldn't have done this. There was no good in hoping for the impossible.

"I'm going to interrupt this fascinating look into runeology," Rodney said. "Where the hell did you learn about this stuff?"

"High school girlfriend," John said automatically. "Rodney, can you find the power source or not?" John needed to leave this room before he decided to do something stupid. _Like step behind the veil to see if I can get back London._

Or find Sirius.

"There doesn't appear to be a separate power source," Rodney said after a minute.

"So no ZPM."

"No. It's probably more like the quantum mirror back home."

"What's a quantum mirror?" Ronon asked from his position at the cave's entrance.

"Something that pushes you into a different reality," Rodney muttered. "Something you do not want to touch."

"Ronon, were these runes here when you came by the first time?" John asked as she stood up.

"Yeah."

John hesitated over the next question, but he had to know. "Do you get a... I don't know, a tingle, when you walk over the circle?"

Ronon actually turned around to give Sheppard a look. "What?"

"That's a no," John muttered. "How about you, Teyla?"

Teyla, who had been watching the scene with baffled interest, stepped over the circle, then back again. The veil fluttered slightly as she approached, but settled down when she moved away. "No, I do not."

"Maybe it's the Ancient gene?" Ronon suggested.

John flicked his eyes to Rodney. "What?" Rodney said. "I didn't feel anything."

"Scratch that." John looked around. The way the veil fluttered gave him the creeps, especially since he couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. What could it be?

The answer came to him in a flash. There were no voices.

The last time John had seen the arch on Earth, he and Luna had heard whispering voices behind the veil. Now, there was only silence.

"Let's get the hell out of here," John said.

"But what about the archway?" Rodney asked.

"We're leaving it. I'm not risking any accidents." John waited until the rest of his team moved out of the small cave and made himself bring up the rear. As he stepped out of the entrance, he gave the archway one final look. The veil fluttered, as if it knew he was leaving. He wanted nothing more than to pull back the veil and reach inside, and the thought of what he might find on the other side scared him more than anything.

Once they were close enough to the front of the cave to see sunlight, Rodney said, "Well, this was a waste of my valuable time."

"That's not all there is," Ronon said. He squinted off into distance while the rest filed out into the light.

"What else is there?" Teyla asked.

Ronon nodded down the hill. "By the crack in the rock, what looks like the ruins of an outpost."

"Why didn't you tell us this before we climbed up this mountain?" Rodney asked.

"Knew you'd complain less if you got to walk downhill to get to the rest of the ruins." Ronon looked over at John. "So, are we going?"

"Yes." John settled his P-90 against his side, wishing he'd brought his sunglasses. The bright sunlight bored into his brain, setting off his headache. It had to be the sun, not the incredibly disturbing blast from his past. The remembered feel of the magic was like a thin film of tar on his skin. It made him feel dirty; like a failure.

The rest of his team shared glances. "You're not going to faint or anything, are you?" Rodney asked. "Because you're kind of heavy, and if you are we should go back to the Jumper and go back to--"

"McKay, I'm fine!" John barked. "We came here for a reason, so let's just get on with it."

Ronon turned on his heel and began to make his way down the cliff face. Rodney gave John another indecipherable look, then followed.

"After you, Teyla," John said.

Teyla lifted her chin. "No. You go first."

"Not this again--"

"You can say what you want to Ronon and Dr. McKay, but you look as if you have just seen a Wraith."

"It's just a headache." John pulled a tiny pack of painkillers out of his pocket. "It's the sun."

"It is not the sun. It began in the cave."

John unscrewed the lid of his water bottle and knocked back the pills. "It's nothing."

"It is not nothing."

While John secured his canteen on his belt, he looked out at the horizon. Trees went on for as far as the eye could see, broken only by small cliffs and rises. Staring at them was easier than looking at Teyla. Hell, staring directly into the sun would be easier. "It's nothing that matters." With that, he started off after Rodney and Ronon. The soft sound of her boots over the rocky trail was the only way John knew Teyla was at his back.

And behind them was the arch, a mirror-perfect copy of the archway that had killed Sirius Black when John was fifteen. Of all the things John had tried to forget from his time as Harry Potter, the image of Sirius falling backwards through that arch was at the top of the list.

This was insane, surreal. Maybe those long years of trying to forget the past had fucked up his memory, and he was wrong.

Except the veil moved when no one was near. The thrown pebble didn't come out the other side. Someone from Earth had written those runes, and recently.

But it didn't seem possible. John didn't know a lot about intergalactic travel, leaving the nuts and bolts of that to Rodney and the other eggheads, but he knew it took a hell of a lot of energy to get from Earth to the Pegasus Galaxy. If there had been that kind of power in the room, Rodney's Ancient sensor would have picked it up.

Still. What was that quote Rodney had mentioned a few months ago? If you get rid of the impossible, then whatever is left must be the answer, however implausible?

One thing John had learned over the years was that very little was impossible.

* * *

"Hey, McKay, how long are you going to be?"

Rodney didn't look up. "At least a few hours. The power residue on these ruins seems indicative that there was a massive nuclear power source present within the last thousand years."

"Radiation?" John asked.

"Negligible." Rodney waved his hand. "Now shut up and let me concentrate."

John looked over at Ronon and Teyla. "Ronon, want to go take a look around?" The man nodded and settled his gun in his holster. "Teyla, can you stay with Rodney and make sure he doesn't get into any trouble?"

"Why do you always think I'm the one who gets into trouble?" Rodney asked hotly. "You're the one with a statistically impossible chance of getting in trouble."

John sighed. At least some things never changed. "Teyla?"

"I will stay with Dr. McKay," Teyla said. There was a challenge in her eyes that John didn't really understand. Before, John would have said it was because he was leaving her with Rodney while he and Ronon went off to have fun, but after her near-death experience and their little encounter...

 _What the hell was I thinking?_ "Look," John said quietly, pulling Teyla to the side. "Ronon knows the ground, and I need to make sure this place it safe before any more teams from Atlantis can come through."

"I am aware of that," Teyla said. Now John felt like an idiot for thinking something was wrong.

"Okay. We'll see you guys in a couple of hours. Report in every fifteen minutes."

"Very well," Teyla said, turning back to Rodney.

"Come on," Ronon said, twitching his jacket and stalking off into the bush. John followed him, trying hard to pay attention to the ground, to any potential threats, but the air was still and warm and silent, and Ronon's footsteps steady and rhythmic.

 _This can't... what? Be real? Make any sense?_ John fumbled the life-signs detector out of his pocket and ran a scan on the area. Only four little dots showed up, and the Rodney and Teyla dots were almost off the screen. _I have to keep the mission in mind, check the area out for dangers, keep my team safe._

John rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. The painkillers weren't helping his headache, and gravity was feeling more intense than normal. He was starting to wonder if he'd made a mistake in going off-world when he was feeling so shity.

 _Carson let me come,_ he reminded himself. _He never lets anyone go if they're in any real danger._

He shook his head. He would pull his shit together, and he would be fine. He had no choice.

"Where are we going?" he asked Ronon as the other man started to climb a small cliff.

Ronon glanced at John over his shoulder. "This ridge goes up over the ruins. I thought we'd see how defensible it is."

"Does it overlook the Stargate?" John asked, gritting his teeth and hauling his ass up the rise.

"Yeah."

As John almost lost his footing on some gravel, he reflected that what really mattered was that he keep perspective. He didn't know what to do about the arch, but he knew what to do about his life. He was John Sheppard, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force and military commanding officer on Atlantis. He'd put magic behind him. He had a new life, far removed from the Harry Potter he used to be, and wizardry.

That was real for him now.

"Why were you so spooked?" Ronon asked suddenly.

"What?"

"In the cave. You freaked out on McKay."

"Did not."

"Yeah, you did." Ronon knelt down to examine some marks in the dirt. "Why?"

"No reason." John stood tall and examined the area. In the distance, he could see the top curve of the Stargate, inactive. From this distance, they would be able to hear if a wormhole opened.

"Huh."

"What, 'huh'?"

"You're lying." Ronon rubbed at the ground, then stood up. "Just can't figure out why."

John wanted to protest that he wasn't lying, but the sun was hammering on his head and trying to think of the truth hurt enough.

"It's not important."

Ronon stepped over a log. "You know what I'm thinking? What you'd do to me if I was hiding something important to the mission."

"It's not--" What? Not important to the mission, that he recognized an artifact in Pegasus that looked just like something that had killed his godfather decades ago on Earth? Not important that someone had cast John's kind of magic on the cave? "It's complicated."

"Complicated how?"

John closed his eyes for a moment. "There's just stuff about... stuff I know, that no one knows."

"So stop being stupid and tell us."

John cracked an eyelid. "Are you calling me stupid?"

The look Ronon gave him was eloquent in its simplicity.

John's headset crackled. He glanced at his watch as he lifted his hand to respond. It had only been ten minutes since they left Teyla and Ronon. "Yes?" No response. "Teyla, Rodney, come in."

"We mean you no harm," Teyla's voice filtered over the headset, and it was abundantly clear that she was not speaking to John or Ronon. John whirled and was about to bolt down the hill when Ronon grabbed his arm and pointed the other direction. Of course, to cover the position from above. John motioned with his hand, and Ronon took point.

"Yes, no harm, no harm at all," Rodney said, his voice teetering on the edge of nervousness. "We're just happy to be here."

A mutter, too low to make out words or speaker, came over the headsets. Probably human, John decided as he crept noiselessly after Ronon. The Wraith would have resulted in more justified screaming from Rodney.

"We do not know what you mean," Teyla said. "We are alone here, looking for information about the Ancestors." A pause while the mutterer spoke some more. "Because they are the Ancestors of us all, no other reason."

Two indistinct voices murmuring.

"Cave? Why would we have gone into any cave?" Teyla asked smoothly.

John's stomach knotted up. Whoever Teyla was talking to hadn't shown up on the life-signs detector while they were in the cave, and couldn't have seen them entering or exiting the chamber with the arch. _Unless that circle of protection was an alarm system and I triggered it when I walked over it._ That meant there was a high possibility that Teyla and Rodney were facing off with a wizard.

John made himself stop and take a long, deep breath, chasing the cobwebs out of his head. Ronon pulled up and glared at John.

Speaking quietly, so his voice would be audible to Teyla and Rodney but not carry over their headsets to the others, John said, "Ronon, find some cover, spot me while I try and get the drop on them. Teyla, Rodney, we're on our way. Stall them. How many?"

As Ronon ran, John heard Teyla said, "Why are you so concerned with our presence, to bring five people with you here?"

More muttering.

"What?" Rodney exclaimed. "What are you talking about, are we from England? Do we look British to... you..." His voice trailed off as he realized what he had said. "How do you know about England?"

This wasn't good. John unclipped his P-90 and dropped to his knees to shimmy up the last rock outcropping between him and his teammates. The voices rose as he peeked over the rise, gun ready.

Teyla stood in front of Rodney, facing towards John, but between John and his friends was a ragged group of six people. They were a disparate grouping, three older men, one child with longish hair, and two women, one older, one about Teyla's age. All faced Teyla and Rodney, but the immediate danger was the older man in the front of the group.

He had a wand out and aimed at Teyla's heart.

John drew a bead on the man's back with his gun. Could he squeeze off a shot before the wizard tried to harm Teyla?

"You must have come through the arch," the man was saying, in a rough voice that couldn't quite mask his British accent. The familiarity of that voice gnawed at John's head, but he pushed that away. It had to be a trick of his ears. "Did you come through the Ministry in London? Do you have news of Voldemort?"

The man knew of Voldemort. A horrible idea occurred to John, a way to shock the man into putting his wand down long enough to get Teyla and Rodney out of danger. Everyone always said John looked just like his father. The man down there looked about the same age as James Potter would have been, had he lived. Maybe John could pull a trick on the man, without even using magic.

John spoke into the open channel. "Ronon, if this doesn't work, stun anyone who points a stick like that at anyone." With that, he carefully rose to his feet, gun aimed at the wizard's back. _Here goes nothing._

Putting on his best British accent, and hoping the spell on his voice didn't screw this up, John said, "Put the wand down, now!"

To a man, the group whirled around, but John only had eyes for the wizard with the wand. The man turned, bringing his wand around and pointing it at John. Then his face went blank with shock. "James?" he said incredulously.

John almost fired his gun in surprise. Even though the man was older, greyer, there was no mistaking him.

Sirius Black. 


	5. Ancient Blood (4/4)

* * *

_Sirius Black._

Quickly, John recovered enough to tighten his grip on his gun. "Why doesn't everyone just put all their weapons down and no one gets hurt?" he said in his normal voice. "Including all kinds of--" John barely managed to avoid saying 'wand'. "Sticks."

Sirius lowered his wand, his eyes warring between shock and suspicion. "Harry, is that you?"

The older woman in the group looked at Sirius sharply. "It is a trick!" she exclaimed. "The Wraith can make us see things we want to see! They must have come through the Sky Circle and are trying to trick us!"

"We are not a trick of the Wraith," Teyla said, cautiously drawing her handgun. "We are explorers, as I said."

"Susan, they're not from the Wraith," Sirius said. "Harry, how did you get here? You didn't go through the archway in the Ministry, did you? By Merlin, it's been over twenty years!"

"Why do you keep calling him Harry?" Rodney demanded. "Why does he keep calling him that?" he asked Teyla.

John swallowed hard. Since he had no idea what to say to Sirius, he slowly lowered his gun. Ronon had him covered. "I'm going to come down now," he said, starting the descent to the others.

 _Sirius wasn't dead. Sirius was alive. Sirius wasn't dead._ The words ran together in his head, chattering loudly enough to push his common sense out of the way for a moment, but only a moment. By the time John hit the ground, he was thinking as clearly as his headache would let him. Sirius came over, but John reflexively lifted his gun and stepped away. Sirius stopped dead. "What is this?"

John blinked. "Listen, you've got me mistaken for someone else," he said, his heart aching the entire time. "My name is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard," he said, the familiar lie rolling off his tongue. He wanted Sirius to believe him, to go back to being a ghost in John's mind. He also wanted Sirius to know him in spite of the lies, to see the boy he had been, before he let everyone in magical England die.

Sirius just stared at him. The older woman at his side, Susan, shook her head. "So, if you didn't come from the arch, and you're from Earth, how'd you get here?" Her voice was brisk and held a strong Devonshire accent.

"Like I said before," Rodney interjected, "Why do you think we're from Earth?"

Susan gave a dry bark-like laugh. "I'm not daft, boy! That American flag." She pointed at John's jacket. "What about you, girl? Don't recognize your accent much."

"I am from Athos," Teyla said. Her eyes were wide and John knew she had understood the significance of the woman knowing of Earth.

"Never heard of it," Susan said.

"We should leave this place," the younger woman said, shivering slightly as she steadied the old man at her side. On a closer look, John realized that the man's eyes were clouded over, blind. "The archway is too close."

"Nonsense, Anne." Susan said. "It's ten minutes walk away, it's not going to come out and get you again."

A large man, bigger than Ronon, with vibrant blue tattoos on his face, growled low. "Maybe if you had been thrown in to your death, Susan, like the rest of us, you would know to place proper fear on the arch."

"Hey!" Sirius shouted. All heads turned to look at him, including the child. Now, John could see that the child was a boy, no older than ten. "We'll have this argument later." He glanced at John, then at Rodney. "You came through the Sky Circle?"

"The Stargate, and yes." Rodney frowned. "How have you been--"

"Dr. McKay!" Teyla interrupted suddenly. She pointed at a section of the ruins. "Did you do that?"

"Do what?" Rodney asked. John wound his way over to where Teyla indicated. "I didn't do anything-- Oh. Oh, no."

A dirt-coated section of the wall had lit up with a small red light. "Rodney?" John glared at him. "Don't suppose you initialized that nice Wraith homing beacon?"

"It must be an Ancient detector," Rodney said quickly. "I only brushed my hand over it."

"Shit." John tapped his headset. "Ronon, get down here, we need to leave, now!"

"What's going on?" Sirius called, gripping his wand tightly.

"What's going on is that we need to get the hell out of here," John said. "We might have accidentally activated an old warning system that is going to bring the Wraith to your doorstep."

"Which means we need to leave, now," Teyla added. "You must come with us."

"Teyla!" John exclaimed, turning to her.

"We cannot leave them for the Wraith to find!" As she spoke, Ronon came out of the bushes, gripping his gun.

"Fuck," John muttered. "Okay, look, Sirius, we need to go, now. You coming with us?"

Sirius studied John for a long moment. "Where are you going?"

"It's a long story, and I'll tell you when we get there." John had to resist the urge to scream. "Please."

Sirius hesitated another second, then asked, "When is your birthday?"

John was too startled by the question to think about lying. "July 31."

Sirius turned to his people. "Come on, let's go."

"Too late," Ronon said, pulling his gun. In the distance came the distinctive sound of the Stargate activating. "We've got incoming!"

"All right, everybody, run!" John hefted his gun. "Teyla, Rodney, lead the way, Ronon and me will bring up the rear. Move!"

The tattooed man took the blind man from Anne and pulled him up into a piggyback, then he ran after Teyla and Rodney, Anne and Susan beside him. Sirius grabbed the young boy's arm and pulled him along, John and Ronon right behind him. A handful of Wraith Darts spun overhead. The culling beams swept through the trees, but for once, luck was with the humans and the trees were so dense the beams missed.

"Rodney, when you get back to the Jumper start her up, we'll be right behind you!" John shouted into his headset.

"You better be!" Rodney yelled back, panting hard. "Why do I let you talk me into these missions?"

"Shut up and run!"

"I am!"

The culling beams turned off and the Darts began firing. A splintered tree toppled across their path, right towards the boy. Sirius yelled and pulled the child out of the way, only to have a flying chunk of wood slam against his head and he went down.

"Father!" the boy shouted in a panic. He fell beside Sirius, shaking him. "Get up!"

John didn't have time to think over the revelation that Sirius had a son. The Wraith Dart fired again, almost hitting them. Ronon hefted his gun and returned fire, but the trees got in the way.

"Ronon, help me!" John shouted. Together, they got the dazed Sirius to his feet, just as another blast came through the trees.

"We'll never make it," Ronon said, hooking a hand into Sirius's belt and pulling him along, the boy in their wake.

Another blast. John ducked, feeling the heat from the shot through his clothes. He had to close his eyes against the explosion of dirt, and when he opened them, he was staring directly at Sirius's dropped wand.

Twenty years vanished as John grabbed the wand and aimed it up at the gathering Wraith Darts. He shoved all his anger and fear and power through his hand and into the wand as he shouted, " _Incendio!_ "

The curse blew through the trees, setting them ablaze as it shot up toward the ships. The air around the Darts shimmered for a moment before the curse hit one ship, which exploded in a massive fireball and took the other ship with it.

Gripping the wand hard in one hand, gun in the other, John ran after Ronon and Sirius as fiery debris rained down upon them. Up ahead was the clearing where they had left the cloaked Jumper. Teyla was waiting for them, bazooka in hand and aimed up at the sky. "We have little time!" she yelled when she spotted them.

The Darts zoomed closer. Teyla fired the bazooka, hitting one of the ships. John took the boy's hand and pulled him along, stumbling, up the ramp of the Jumper as Ronon dumped Sirius unceremoniously onto the bench beside his people. "Teyla, we're out of here!" John shouted, slipping into the pilot's seat. The ramp hadn't even closed all the way behind Teyla when John lifted the ship into the air.

Rodney squeaked. "Great way to dump us all out the back!" he exclaimed as he held onto John's chair.

"Yes, Rodney, because getting hit by those Wraith weapons is the best way to end this day!" John narrowly avoided a blast from one ship, but another hit the Jumper and the cloak failed.

"We're visible!" Rodney exclaimed, shoving his way to the back. "Move!"

John ignored the frantic babble in the back and concentrated on his Jumper. The computer told him that the last blast had knocked out the cloak, but he still had weapons and most of the power.

As he flew up, he finally spotted the extent of their problem. Over ten Wraith Darts zipped around, between them and the still-active Stargate. The Jumper was a sitting duck.

John let out a breath, pushing the pain of his headache back, pushing everything back. "Rodney," he called as he turned off computer-aided navigation and took the controls to manual, "Change the cloak over to shields, route all power to that. You've got thirty seconds."

"Thirty _seconds_? Are you insane?" Rodney was already moving, yanking down panels and pushing things.

John dialed up the internal gravity and internal dampeners. "Zelenka's been fiddling with making this Jumper shield-compatible, Rodney. He did it in an hour, you can do it in less than a minute! Teyla, I need you up here!" With that, John pushed the Jumper into a nosedive.

Teyla let out a gasp as the ground rushed up to meet them. "What--"

"When the Gate shuts off, you dial M4H-212," John said, hands steady on the controls. "Got it?"

"Yes." Teyla slid into the co-pilot chair, her hands hovering over the Gate controls. "What are you doing?"

"Flying us home." With only a moment to spare, John pulled the Jumper level, zooming through the trees. The Wraith ships on their tail tried to keep up, firing the whole time, but John's flight path put too many trees between them and the enemy, and the blasts were deflected.

A rock wall appeared out of nowhere, making John bank hard to the left. Rodney swore. "Are you trying to break my neck?" he demanded, stumbling up to the front.

"Where are my shields?" John demanded as he dropped the ship low and hit the reverse button, stopping the Jumper dead. Darts flew over them, unable to stop in time. Once the last had flown over, John dropped open the Jumper's weapon ports and fired a drone at the neatly lined-up Darts, taking out three with one blow. "Any day now!"

"Wait for it... Got it now!" Rodney shouted.

The view screen shimmered as the shield covered the ship. Not wasting another movement, John pulled the Jumper up and into the air. The remaining Darts fired, but the blasts were easily deflected. John pushed the ship forward, aiming hard for the Gate.

"Teyla, now!"

Teyla quickly dialed. Rodney leaned over John's chair, staring at the address. "We can't go there! There's nowhere to fly the Jumper!"

"Rodney," John said in what he thought was a more than reasonable tone, "Now isn't a good time."

John coaxed more and more speed out of the Jumper, the engines at a screaming pitch. The Darts were right behind them, way too close. Then John flipped the Jumper upside down and tightened his grip on the controls.

"Hold on to something!" he yelled just before they entered the wormhole. The journey from one side of the galaxy to the other only took a few seconds, then they were out and John pushed hard on the controls, barely missing the large stone wall in the enclosure that held the Gate. He looped them up into the air, weaving and dodging the ruined buildings that rose above the Stargate.

The Jumper's engines faltered momentarily. "Sheppard, we have a serious problem," Rodney said.

"That's for sure," John muttered, blinking hard around the pounding in his head. Something wet tricked over his upper lip. _Always need a Kleenex at the wrong time,_ he thought in disgust as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "What?"

"These ships weren't designed for the shielding. Taking the blasts from those Dart was a suicidally massive drain on our power."

John wanted to argue, but as he touched the Jumper's computer with his mind, he could feel the drain on the power banks. He killed the shield. "I hope you have some other suggestions, because we had four Darts make it through after us," he said, twisting the Jumper around and zipping a dangerous path through the ruins.

"Weapons?" Ronon asked from the back. "How many drones do we have?"

John pulled up the screen for everyone to see. "One."

"How about that thing you did back on the planet?" Ronon pressed. "Blowing them up with your mind?"

"Don't be stupid," Rodney said. "Sheppard can't kill things with his mind." He gave a muted 'eep' as John flew the Jumper through a hole in a building barely large enough for the Jumper.

"Why don't we go to your world?" Sirius asked from the back, his voice wavering slightly. "Unless this is where you live. Cheerful place. Reminds me of home."

John snorted, remembering 12 Grimwald Place in London. "Love to, but the Wraith think we're not there, and I'd like to keep that illusion just a little longer."

"How about M7G-677, they have the shield that kills Wraith ships," Rodney said.

"Not putting the kids at risk," John said. He pulled the Jumper around in a long arc, heading back for the Gate. One Dart overcompensated and slammed into a building. "We'll go to M85-393."

"Their Stargate has fallen over," Teyla reminded him.

"And we'll fly right out of it. Dial."

The lights in the Jumper flickered as Teyla dialed the Stargate. "Oh, no," Rodney muttered.

"What?" John threaded the Jumper through a series of small openings, aiming directly for the Gate. The Darts fired at them again, but John managed to avoid the blasts.

"We're lower on power than I thought!" Rodney yanked Teyla out of her chair and sat down in her place. "Dialing the Gate drained power, as is this insane flying you're doing. Who are you trying to impress?"

"Not you, apparently!" John almost lost control as a shot from a Dart brushed the side of the Jumper, just as they entered the wormhole.

Spit out the other side, John flew straight up into the atmosphere. There was nowhere to hide on this flat, barren world, and John would have to face the Darts head-on.

"Two of them, on our six," Rodney muttered. John took his eyes off the controls and raised his eyebrows at Rodney. "What? You say it!"

"Anyone ever tell you you're really annoying when you're freaking out?"

Rodney frowned at him. "Why is your nose bleeding?"

John wiped his nose again, this time looking at the massive amount of blood on his sleeve. "Don't know." He spun the ship in a graceful spiral, twisting out of the way of the Darts. "I've only got one drone, so this has to be good. Teyla, on my signal, dial Atlantis and have your IDC ready."

"If we dial out again, we're going to be powerless," Rodney said. He yanked open the paneling under the controls. "I'll see if I can pull power in from weapons."

"After I fire the drone!"

"Of course after, what do you think I'm trying to do?"

John couldn't find an approximately witty retort in time, before a Dart buzzed them and he had to concentrate on flying. After a series of complicated turns in the upper atmosphere that left even his head spinning, the two Darts were perfectly lined up, and John fired the drone.

The Darts exploded, large blasts in the sky. Rodney dropped to his knees and buried his head in the controls. Teyla wedged herself between the chairs, her hip brushing John's shoulder. "Okay, now!" Rodney said, pulling himself out of the controls.

Teyla dialed Atlantis, and the Jumper's lights flickered and died. "What happened?" Ronon asked.

"I told you we were out of power!" Rodney said. "We've got enough for minor propulsion and life support and inertial dampeners."

"Then how are we going to get back to the Stargate?"

"I don't think getting down is going to be a problem," John said as gravity pulled the Jumper back toward the planet. He tapped on his headset. "Atlantis? This is Sheppard, you copy?"

"We do," Elizabeth's voice came over the earpiece. "We are waiting for your IDC."

"Yeah. Look, we ran into a bit of a problem on the planet," John said, trying to hold the ship steady as they fell through the atmosphere, Dart debris falling with them. "Teyla's going to send through her IDC, but don't open the shield until you get my word, and get ready to close it the moment we're through."

"What happened?" Elizabeth demanded.

"It's a long story," John said, watching as Teyla tapped on her IDC control. "Really long. Epic long. Lord of the Rings extended edition long."

"Colonel Sheppard, are you okay?" Elizabeth asked.

"No, he's not," Rodney chimed in. "And you might want to clear the Gateroom, Elizabeth. Just in case."

"Are you under fire?"

"No, just surrounded by flaming bits of Wraith Dart falling at the same rate we are."

"Understood."

The planet was coming up awfully fast. John hoped that the automatic Jumper docking system in Atlantis could deal with the speed the ship was going, or else they'd be shooting out of the Gate and right out of the control tower into the ocean.

Maybe it was the G-forces the ship was pulling, but white dots started flashing in John's eyes, pulsing in time with his headache. That annoying trickle of wetness came over his lip again, running between his parted lips. _Concentrate, just concentrate a few more minutes._

Through some twist of fate, the Jumper was more or less vertical as John nudged it to the left, just in the right direction to fit perfectly through the flat Stargate. Then they were in the Atlantis Gateroom, and the city grabbed onto the Jumper and stopped it from slamming into the stairs.

The Gate shut down.

The soft exclamations from the back seemed distant. "What happened to the room?" John asked, staring out of the Jumper window. Everything was upside down.

"We landed on the roof, you idiot," Rodney said.

Something in the Jumper beeped. "Oh crap," John had time to say, then the Jumper lost artificial gravity and everyone fell onto the ceiling.

"Ugh," Rodney said, staggering to his feet. "This is the last time I let you fly," he muttered as he made his way to the back of the Jumper, stepping over their new passengers. "Move your arm. Yes, you, that arm."

John lay where he had fallen, staring up at the pilot's chair. "That wasn't all that much fun."

Teyla bent over him, frowning. "John?"

"Hi." John let her pull him into a sitting position. "Are we there yet?"

"Are you okay?" Teyla asked, taking his face in her hands and looking into his eyes.

Trying to focus on something so close to his face made his eyes cross. "I, uh.... what?"

The back of the Jumper opened and half of Atlantis poured in. Teyla hooked an arm around John's chest and pulled him up. They made their way out of the Jumper and out onto the floor of the Gateroom, where a mix of security and medics were tending to Sirius's people.

Conscious that Teyla was holding him, John pulled away and stumbled the few steps to the stairs. He managed to sit without falling and laid his hands on the steps, feeling Atlantis humming underneath him, worried for him but glad he was home.

Elizabeth came over, wearing that expression of worry and exasperation she always had after his team had a mission go to hell. "What happened?"

John waved his hand vaguely. "Wraith. There was an Ancient gene activation... thingy." He shrugged, blinking hard. "And flying and stuff. The usual."

Elizabeth frowned at him. "Carson, can you come over here?" she called.

Dr. Beckett looked up from where he was treating Sirius's head wound. "Be right there."

John stared unsteadily at Sirius. Did the man believe him when he said he wasn't Harry? John wasn't really sure, but something about the way Sirius was staring back at him, made John know that he wasn't fooled.

The boy at Sirius's side was clutching at his sleeve, trying hard to pretend he wasn't scared, but looking around the Gateroom with huge, terrified eyes. John's gut clenched. The boy knew how close he had come to losing his... his father that day. It was as close as John had come to losing Sirius again, so soon after finding him again.

Beckett nodded at the medics, then came over to John. "Colonel, did you hit your head?"

"No. Yes." John frowned. "There was that failing gravity thing in the Jumper."

"What made your nose start to bleed?" Beckett shone a tiny light in John's eyes, spiking up his headache. John closed his eyes and put his hand up to ward off the doctor.

"Nothing, it just started."

That didn't reassure Beckett. "Are you sensitive to light?"

"Yes, but I'll be fine."

Beckett rooted around in John's vest pockets, emerging with the empty packet of painkillers. "Are these working? Colonel Sheppard?"

John had to concentrate. "No."

"Carson, what's wrong with him?" Elizabeth asked. They were gathering quite the crowd of on-lookers, including the curious glances of Sirius's group.

"Colonel Sheppard, you were right about one thing," Beckett said as he motioned over a stretcher. "Dr. Zelenka's team just finished its analysis of the light beam that healed Teyla last week. It is designed to pull energy out of bystanders with the Ancient gene, to heal the injured. In your case, you were the only one around."

"What... Rodney?" John asked. Full sentences were a bit too hard on his brain.

"The machine doesn't like those with the gene therapy," Becket said, maneuvering John onto the stretcher. "I should never have put you back on duty."

"Huh." John closed his eyes against the glare. "It's okay."

"Oh, stop being such a martyr," Rodney said. "You get a nice ride to the infirmary and I have to figure out how to get this powerless Jumper out of the Gateroom."

"Rodney, now is not the time for this," Elizabeth said.

"Nah, 's fine," John muttered. He let his hand drop to his lap, and felt it brush something in his tac vest. Sirius's wand.

He opened his eyes and looked around. Sirius was still watching John steadily, his arm around the boy. John wasn't sure what to think. No matter what might have happened, he was John Sheppard now, and he had to put the well-being of the Atlantis expedition ahead of everything else. Did he think that Sirius was a threat, any more than the rest of the people they'd brought back to the city?

"Hey, Rodney, give this to Sirius, would you?" He handed over the wand as the medics wheeled him out of the Gateroom, away from the blur of voices in the Gateroom.

Too late, John realized he'd forgotten to ask Sirius not to tell anyone about John's past as Harry Potter.

* * *

The clock by John's bed read 0300 hours when Teyla crept into the infirmary. John looked away from bubbling green water of the air purification system, made so much more fascinating by Beckett's pharmaceuticals, and gave her a very weak grin. "Hey."

"Hello," she said, slipping into the chair beside his bed. "Dr. Beckett informed Dr. Weir that you will be fine in a few weeks."

"Weeks, schmeeks," John said. "I'll be out of here and running around in no time."

Teyla gave him a ghostly smile. "They told us that your condition has a lot to do with the fact that you saved my life in the Gateroom."

"Don't be stupid," John muttered. "It's a whole bunch of stuff, not just that."

"Nevertheless--"

"Hey," John interrupted. "You'd do the same for me. It was an emergency."

"It was." The silence between them grew heavy. "We have been speaking with the people we brought back from M63-S25."

John swallowed, cold. "How's that working out for you all?"

"It is... interesting." Teyla's voice dipped in puzzlement. "Once she was introduced to the leader of the group, Dr. Weir took complete charge of the discussion."

"Really?"

"Yes." Teyla pulled her legs up to her chest and settled into the chair. "The medical team has examined everyone, and they are healthy."

"Good." John looked back at the green bubbling water. "Do you think they're who they say they are?"

Teyla frowned. "Are you asking me if I believe them truthful?"

"I guess."

"I believe..." She picked over her words carefully. "While I have never heard of anyone being stuck in a time fold before, it--"

"Wait, back up," John said. "Time fold?"

"That is what Dr. McKay is calling it," Teyla explained. "Three of them tell terrifying stories, of being thrown into the archway on Earth by their people, then existing for untold ages in a blackness, unable to move or escape."

"What? Who?"

"The old man, the tattooed man, and the younger woman," Teyla recited. "The tattooed man is named Leif. He says that he was the shaman of his people, a race of warriors. They came to the shores of a new land, and in this land they encountered many strange and wondrous things. Leif was captured by the people of this land and thrown into the arch, to be sacrificed to his own false gods, they claimed."

John blinked. "That's fucked up. Did he say how long ago that was?"

Teyla nodded. "Dr. Weir has listened to his tale, and says that if it is true, he would have come to the British Isles as part of a Viking invasion force in the late tenth century."

John stared at her. "That's nuts."

"This is why Dr. McKay calls it a time fold." Teyla toyed with the edge of her pant hem. "The old man, he will not tell us his name. He was a blacksmith in a town near a ring of stones, not long after Leif was sacrificed, but his eyes became clouded. He was still able to see things, in his mind's eye, Leif says. The people of his village threatened to burn him as a witch, but the local monk was able to convince them to throw him into the arch instead."

Nausea was beginning to claw its way up John's throat. Be burned at the stake, or be thrown into an unknown void...

"The last is the woman, Anne. She is hesitant to tell her story, because she was so young when it happened. Not much older than Jinto is now." Her eyes flashed with anger. "She was married to the village leader, but she could not give him children and instead of putting her aside, he accused her of a false crime and decreed her to be executed. She was only a girl. Somebody intervened, and instead of hanging she was thrown into the arch for her sins."

"What about the other woman, Susan? How'd she get involved in this?"

"She said that during an event called the 'Blitz', she was in the British Museum and sought shelter on the lower levels. She came across the arch in a storage room and had to dive into it as the ceiling came down."

"Wait, the arch was in muggle hands during World War II?" John ran his hand through his hair, thinking hard. "I guess that's not totally impossible... But then how did they get out into the Pegasus Galaxy?"

Teyla raised an eyebrow at John. "That is Sirius's tale."

Feigning nonchalance, John sat up in bed and crossed his legs under him. "What did he have to say?"

"Of falling into the arch during a battle, in which he was stunned with an energy weapon." Teyla paused. "Rodney theorizes that the energy pulse was enough to knock everyone through the other arch, in this galaxy."

"How does that work?"

Rodney's voice cut across the infirmary, loud in the late night. "Merlin."

John twisted his head around to see Rodney and Ronon coming over to the bed. "What are you talking about?"

"Sirius invoked Merlin when he was talking to you, calling you Harry. Or maybe just saying something about the hair," Rodney said, sitting on the end of John's bed. "Anyway, if you consider that, it makes perfect sense."

John narrowed his eyes. "How long was I unconscious?"

"Not long enough," Rodney said. "How much did you hear of SG-1's mission reports about what happened in England recently?"

"I've been kind of busy dealing with the Wraith, Rodney."

"Apparently your 'Merlin' was an Ancient," Teyla supplied. "He did not ascend, but left devices on Earth. Rodney believes that he may have built the device in Pegasus, and either constructed one on Earth or took the other of the pair there when the Ancestors left this galaxy."

John had to think about that for a long moment. "So you're telling me that this is all _Merlin_ 's fault."

"It makes sense," Rodney said, then frowned as John shook his head. "What?"

"Why would anyone do something like that? Build a device that could do something like that?"

"Maybe to see if he could? I don't know. Do you think we could get it to work the other way, back to Earth?"

A cold sweat broke out on John's skin. "No."

"But--"

"But no! We're talking about a thing that throws you into a black void, Rodney!"

"The arch on the other side--"

"Is under a ton of rubble a mile under London!" John's shout echoed in the suddenly silent room.

Rodney held John's gaze for a long moment. "That's why you freaked out about the arch on the planet," Rodney said. It was not a question. "You've seen it before."

John clenched his jaw, trying to think of a way out of this that would let him avoid lying to his teammates. "When I was a teenager."

"How do you know the arch on Earth is under rubble?"

John kept his mouth shut, feeling as if he was being attacked on all sides. A lifetime of lies was coming back on him, the repercussions for hiding who he was from his friends. How could he tell them what he was, how he knew, when it would destroy his life?

Teyla solved the problem for him, reaching out and touching the back of his hand with her fingertips. "John, we only wish to know."

He looked down at where she touched him, then as she withdrew her hand, he turned his wrist over and rubbed a thumb over the mound of scar tissue. "The place where the arch was..." John let out a long sigh, pushing away the memory of broken bodies and screaming. "It was destroyed in a bombing in the eighties. The police said it was the IRA." The police had blamed a lot of the mayhem from the magical civil war on the IRA, with no small influence from the muggle government, John was sure. Blaming a known enemy solved so many problems.

"How did you take down those two Darts in the forest?" Rodney pressed. "Ronon said--"

"I'm not sure what I saw, they might have run into each other," Ronon interrupted. John's first thought was that someone had modified the man's memory, but then he spotted the familiar gleam in Ronon's eyes.

"Not this again," Rodney exclaimed. "First Sirius claiming he didn't know what I meant when I asked him why he called you Harry. Ronon, you said he destroyed two Darts with a stick!"

Ronon shrugged. "There was a lot of stuff happening."

John's entire life teetered on razor-thin edge. He could lie to his teammates and lose their trust, or he could tell the truth and risk ruining his entire life, all that he had built in the many years since he left England. He took a deep breath, and made a choice.

"No, Ronon, it's okay," John said. "Rodney... Do you believe in magic?"

Rodney sighed. "What, in a young girl's heart?"

"McKay!"

"What do you expect me to say?" Rodney demanded. "Yes? No?"

"I'm serious."

The faint amusement on Rodney's face died. "I'm going to get Carson."

"I'm not--"

"Yes, you are! You hit your head and broke something in your brain, because there is no such thing as magic. All there is, is technology sufficiently advanced to appear as magic!"

"Stop quoting Clarke's Law at me!" John said, running both hands through his hair and almost knocking loose his IV in the process.

"The only time we've seen what looks like magic is superior technology," Rodney said, hopping off the bed and pacing around. "Unless..." He whirled. "Are you going to ascend? You're going to ascend! You're using ascendy powers and you think that's magic!"

"I'm not going to ascend," John said in a huff, considering throwing a pillow at Rodney. He shouldn't be surprised that Rodney didn't believe him, but it still felt like a let-down, that he'd let out his big secret and one of his best friends totally dismissed him. "For some reason, I like it here."

Rodney kept pacing at a rate that made John slightly dizzy. John let his gaze slide to Ronon, who gave him the raised eyebrow and smirk that meant he was moderately impressed. At Ronon's side, Teyla had a slightly dazed expression.

"Excuse me," an annoyed voice said from the doorway. Everyone turned to see Beckett glaring at them. "Colonel Sheppard, I thought I told you to rest."

"I am," John said, trying to appear his most innocent.

"This isnna resting!" Beckett came over to fiddle with the IV drip.

"I find yelling at Rodney very relaxing," John said, giving Rodney a winning smile.

"You would." Beckett shook his head. "What am I going to do with you? Finding strange people from Earth to bring back to my infirmary."

"So, are they who they say they are?" John asked. "Viking shaman, blacksmith, English matron and museum worker?"

"Aye, as far as I can tell," Beckett said unhappily. "I still have to go over Leif's x-rays, but the wear on his bones is consistent with the kind of lifestyle he claims to have lived, same with the old man. But how am I going to write a report on this?"

"Come on, Doc, is finding English people in the Pegasus Galaxy so much different than finding out..." John trailed off, unable to come up with a sufficient comparison. "You know, all the stuff we've found?"

"Yes, it bloody well is." Becket finished whatever he was doing. "All of you. Out."

Ronon nodded at Sheppard and drifted out of the room. Rodney said, "There's no such thing as magic," one last time before he vanished after Ronon. John had no doubt that Rodney would come up with a half-dozen explanations as to why there was no such thing as magic before the sun rose.

Teyla turned to Beckett. "Dr. Beckett, I wish to say one last thing to Colonel Sheppard."

"Very well," Beckett said. "But be quick about it, And Colonel, that man, Sirius, wanted me to tell you that he wants to talk to you when you're better."

 _I'll bet he does._ "Thanks." Once Beckett had left, John raised his eyebrow at Teyla. "What?"

Teyla smiled gently at him. "When we met, when you told me that you liked Ferris wheels and football, I must admit I did not trust you."

"Okay..."

"I mean to say, it is not your words that made me trust you. It was your actions." She stepped up of the side of the bed and deliberately put her hands on his shoulders. "That has not changed." She rested her forehead against his, Athosian-style.

Flashes of their drunken sexual encounter passed over John's mind, but he pushed those away and concentrated on the first time they had done this, after he and his men had rescued the Athoisans from the hive ship two years before. "Thank you," he murmured, feeling a burden lift from his shoulders.

Teyla pulled away, still smiling. "I will leave you to your rest."

"Like I'm going to get any rest," John said, yawning. "I..." He yawned again, feeling sleep tugging at him. "Damn it, Carson."

"Good night." Teyla's voice followed John as he laid back down on the bed and closed his eyes, letting the drugs drag him under. In spite of everything else, John couldn't fight the satisfaction of the day's flight, or saving those people, or knowing that when he woke up, Sirius would be there.

He just didn't know what he could say to the man.

Atlantis must have heard his anxiety, because she sang him a sweet, happy lullaby as he fell asleep.

* * *

John tapped on his laptop, responding to one of Rodney's rambling dissertations on the impossibility of magic with a well-placed retelling of Cinderella. He wondered how long it would take Rodney to realize John was calling him an ugly step-sister.

After he hit send, John stretched his arms over his head and contemplated going to get more tea. An hour before lunch, the commissary was empty except for John. He had only been released from the infirmary a few hours before, and he was looking forward to getting back to his routine.

The transporter at the end of the commissary activated, and John sighed. He really wasn't in the mood for company, Marine or scientist. He hadn't factored on the third option, however.

Sirius stepped out of the transporter, his military escort on his heels. He spotted John at the table and stopped. John's heart was pounding so hard he could scarcely breathe, but he stood up. He would have to talk to Sirius sooner or later... but he still didn't know what to say. "Care to join me?" he said, keeping his voice light.

"That would be... yes, I would."

John looked past Sirius at the sergeant. "I can take Mr. Black back to the guest quarters after we're done." The Marine nodded and headed back to the transporter.

Sirius came up the steps, stopping a few feet away. "Are we going to sit?" he asked.

John nodded jerkily. "Please," he said, extending his hand toward the chair. He waited until Sirius sat down across the table before slipping back into his seat and closing his laptop. "So... How are you settling in?"

"Settling in?" Sirius demanded. "What kind of a question is that? How about what you've been doing for the last twenty years? Why 'John'? What happened--" He cut himself off. "No, I can pretty well guess what happened."

John tried to regulate his breathing. "How can you guess?" he asked, very carefully not yelling.

Sirius gave him a look he remembered so well, that sharp stare the man developed after Azkaban. "You're here, aren't you? Pretending to be some American? Your bloody scar's gone, you're not using magic." He looked out the window. "You don't have to tell me how it ended."

And even though there was no disappointment or blame in Sirius's voice, John felt the hot familiar rush of shame and failure, that he hadn't been able to save everyone. Hell, anyone. "I'm not pretending to be John Sheppard," he said, careful to keep his voice low. "I _am_ John Sheppard. I'm in the Air Force, the commanding officer of this expedition. I earned my rank and my position. I've got a responsibility to the people here, to the people in this galaxy, and that's not a lie!"

Sirius shook his head. "No, you're pretending you're not Harry Potter. You're pretending you weren't the most promising wizard Hogwarts had seen--"

"Oh, God, shut up!" John exclaimed, pushing his chair back. "You don't know anything about what happened! There wasn't anything to stay for! Tonks helped me get out, but that was only after it was too late!"

Sirius blinked at him. "Tonks... she's still around?" he asked, allowing a tiny sliver of hope to creep into his voice.

John made himself meet Sirius's eyes. "She's one of the only ones."

Sirius paled. "Then Voldemort won?"

"No." John had to look down. "And yes."

"Oh."

John gripped his hands together, feeling the bones grind painfully before he let go. "Tell me about your son," he said, casting around for something else to speak about. "I don't think anyone's told me his name."

Despite the shell-shocked expression on his face, Sirius smiled faintly. "William. He's a good boy." The words were mild, but the pride was unmistakable.

John pushed the pain of lost possibilities away. He couldn't change the past, and he'd lost Sirius long ago. He wouldn't begrudge Sirius his son. "His mother..."

"Also came through the arch with us," Sirius said. "The Wraith took her, on another world we traveled to." The pain in the words had been rubbed soft, an old hurt. "Her name was Rosabla. She wanted to name the boy after her father."

"I'm sorry for your loss," John said, .

Sirius shrugged. "Magic wasn't able to help me then. I had William to care for, he was so young at the time. He's quite a handful, even now."

"He seems like a good kid, didn't freak out when the Wraith came."

"He has seen many strange things," Sirius agreed. "He does not find it strange to grow up with a handful of people thrown out of time and place from Earth."

"What about you?" John asked. "How do you deal with it?"

"What else was I going to do?" Sirius asked in return. "You deal with the Wraith and this marvelous city." He smiled again. "The things you must have seen..." He shook his head. "Your Dr. Weir, she has offered us a place on the mainland with your friend's people."

John ignored the stabbing sense of loss in his chest. "The Athosians are good people, you'll like them."

"The others want to go. They are used to farming, hunting. Even Susan grew up farming in Devonshire, before the wars."

"What about you?"

Sirius stared at John. "You look so much like your father sometimes..."

"Yeah, I know."

"But not now." Sirius leaned back in his chair. "It's not you mother's look, either."

"Blame it on the burden of command," John said. "Can we not talk about this?"

"Fine." Anger stirred on Sirius's face. "I didn't tell your leader that I knew you, but you need to tell me why you're here, wearing that American flag on your arm! How could you leave?"

Knowing Sirius wasn't talking about leaving Earth, but the Wizarding world, John reached for his mug, even though the tea dregs at the bottom of the cup would be cold and bitter. He drained the cup, fighting to not wince at the taste. "There wasn't anything left to stay for."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, John trying to read the tea leaves at the bottom of his cup. The leaves told him he would find someone long lost, and to avoid large dogs. He put the cup down with a thump.

"Tell me," Sirius said finally.

John didn't want to talk about this, didn't want to think about it, at all. Still, he cleared his throat, and pushed his mind back to what happened after Sirius had fallen through the veil. "Uh, I thought Bellatrix killed you, so I went to try and, I don't know, do something, only Voldemort was in the Ministry..."

* * *

John stood on the control room balcony and watched the Puddlejumper fly off toward the mainland, carrying Sirius and the veil people to their new home on the mainland.

He wasn't able to bring himself to fly them over, but he had gone down to say goodbye. Or at least 'so long'; the old man was staying on Atlantis for now for cataract surgery. When Dr. Beckett had said that he might be able to restore the man's sight, the man had smiled a gap-toothed smile and introduced himself as Peter. So at least one of the group would be back in a few weeks to pick up Peter, and report how things were going on the mainland.

It had been a week since John had explained to Sirius exactly how the Wizarding world had fallen into civil war and decay, after which Sirius had excused himself. John couldn't blame him; he hadn't wanted to be around himself at that point either, but he didn't have a choice. Since that day, John hadn't seen much of Sirius. He had heard, however, that William had been hanging around Ronon's practice sessions, and the Setedan had shown the boy a few self-defence moves. In fact, Major Lorne's comment indicated the boy had developed a slight case of hero worship for Ronon.

John tried really hard not to be jealous. When it came time for the group to leave for the mainland, John had given William a bag of candy he'd been hoarding from the Daedalus and told him not to let the Athosian kids to give him any trouble. The boy nodded solemnly and took the candy, as uneasy around Harry as the first time they met.

As for Sirius... well, John had given him a manly handshake. It was still too early anything else, especially in front of people. John wasn't able to talk to Sirius about the dead, and he didn't know how to talk about anything else. He wasn't that fifteen-year-old boy any longer. He tried to make himself believe that he didn't need Sirius, that it was enough to know the man was alive. But that was too much of a lie, and John knew it.

The balcony door opened quietly. "I thought about sending them back to Earth on the Daedalus," Elizabeth said, coming over to stand beside John.

"Why didn't you?"

Elizabeth leaned on the railing and looked out at the ocean. "It's not their world anymore. Besides, I offered, but they turned me down. They wanted to stick together."

"Can't blame them," John said. He crossed his arms over his chest and let the sunshine warm his face. "After twenty years, family means something."

"I agree."

John let his eyes drift down from the sky to the water. "Hey, look." He pointed down at the water. "Whales."

"They're not whales," Elizabeth contradicted, although her eyes lit up at the sight of the creatures. "The biologists say they're closer to the shape of the marine reptiles, plesiosaurs, only warm-blooded."

"Like I said, whales." John watched until the animals were out of sight, then said, "Are we going back to deal with the arch?"

Slowly, Elizabeth shook her head. "You said it was unlikely the Wraith would know it was there, hidden in that cave. I think for now, we'll leave it alone. Unless we can determine what the likelihood of anyone being able to touch it without being pulled in."

"Good plan."

"That's what I thought." Elizabeth straightened up. "I have no idea how I'm going to write this up for the report." She shook her head. "Vikings in the Pegasus Galaxy."

"Better than frat boys," John called after her as she headed back into the control room. He thought he heard her laugh, but the wind pulled the noise away.

John let the wind play with his hair, the feel of Atlantis humming through the railing under his hand. The city grew more content with every passing day as the expedition explored more of her sections, bringing the city back to life.

Maybe... maybe, if Beckett gave him the all clear, John could take his team over to the mainland in a few days and see how the veil people were settling in. Teyla could see the Athosians, Ronon could show William a few more fight moves, Rodney could use the opportunity to bitch about the Jumper engines.

And John could maybe start to fix things with Sirius. It would be slow and hard, but John couldn't let an opportunity like this go. He'd lost so many people, he wasn't going to let Sirius go.

"Colonel Sheppard?"

John tapped his headset. "Yes, Rodney?"

"I need you to come touch something in the chair room."

John couldn't help it. He snorted. "Really?"

Rodney huffed. "If you could pull yourself out of the sixth grade for five seconds, I have a city to prepare for an unstoppable enemy that you may have heard of? Oh, say, the Wraith?"

"I'll be there in five minutes," John said, and cut the channel. Rodney was so much fun to wind up.

As he hightailed it through the city, walls shimmering slightly as he passed, John realized that now would be an excellent time to show Rodney the hidden entrance to Atlantis's power systems. They had downtime, and if Rodney disappeared into the power systems for a month... well, his birthday was coming up anyway, and John didn't have a clue what to get the brilliant astrophysicist who knew everything.

"What do you think?" he asked the city, running his fingers over the wall. "Time to let McKay in on the secret?"

The walls shone, and Atlantis was happy.

In time, John knew he might be too.

_the end_


End file.
